Day 186 – We Did The Mash… We Did the Monster Mash…

I think behind Christmas, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Or was one of my favorite holidays. I loved decorating the house and all the scary costumes. I just think that the spooky orange lighting and all the skulls and skeletons are really cool. I don’t want you to think I am this macabre Edgar Alan Poe fan or anything. But I just absolutely loved that holiday.

I cannot decide if it is nostalgic or pathetic on my part to miss something that – in the grand scheme of things – is not terribly important. Taking kids to the school carnival or a Trunk or Treat at the local church, shopping for that really cool costume… Does all of that even mean anything anymore?

I remember being so excited as a kid to get to dress up like Spider-Man or Darth Vader and go out at night trick or treating. Of course, Adair is very different from where I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina where we got to trick or treat in real, honest to goodness neighborhoods.

Living out in the country like we did, we never got trick or treating kids ringing the doorbell. Decorations for holidays were really more for us than for anyone else. And I have to admit it was really cool to be coming home from work after the sun went down and seeing everything all bright and lit up.

I would do our porch up with these displays. It was nothing to take pictures of and send into magazines or anything but I felt like I always did a neat job with what I had to work with. And now, on today of all days, I look back in reflection and, dang it, I miss it.

I suppose that we could have decorated here in the store but there is that part of me that wonders, “What is the point?” I guess really at the end of the day, those pessimists could argue that there is no point in any of it… but who wants to live life like that? Hey, if that is how you want to live, I guess you can live that way.

Wow, I started writing this essay and I could feel myself getting depressed just writing it but then I felt like I made a turn. I started thinking about how the world has changed so much and how the survivors that make it out are going to have to work hard to get back to all the little distractions that make life worth living.

I look forward to getting us back on track. We just don’t know how long it will take…

 

Day 186 – Zombiology 101: The Keening

Okay so, first things first, Happy Halloween. We have got a lot of stuff going on today and I am not certain how many articles I will get to write. So, in case I miss it, Happy Halloween. I really would rather be taking kids to a Trunk or Treat or a school carnival than where we are right now. But wish in one hand and you-know-what in the other and see which one fills up first right?

So, today’s article is pretty important and I am sorry for not getting around to this subject sooner. It is a funny thing. It is one thing to see a zombie. We have all seen the special effects in movies but it is a whole other animal to actually see a deceased, rotting corpse walking around. It is another thing to smell a zombie. If you have ever been close enough to experience roadkill baking on the concrete highway in the August heat, you know what I am talking about. And keep in mind, vultures and other carrion birds have already pecked out and eaten all the juicy parts. But another aspect (and perhaps one of the worst) is to hear a zombie.

For this article, I want to imagine Zombie Zack. Recently turned after a nasty bite to his calf, Zombie Zack has reanimated and is now in search of food. As a lone zom shambling about he makes constant sounds. It is a wet gargling noise like he has a dump truck load of phlegm in his lungs that he refuses to cough out. So it just wheezes and percolates inside his lungs. And he is not trying to be quiet about it either.

He is shambling around and in the distance, he hears an audible keening. I know that is a term typically reserved for a banshee but I seriously doubt the supernatural police are going to come and arrest me. For whatever reason, something clicks in that rotting zom brain. It is like a sound that they recognize and use to communicate with one another. And that specific keening is like shouting a sentence that Zombie Zack and all other zoms in the area seem to understand. “I’ve found food!”

Zombie Zack hears this call and issues out a response call. Now, like lighting the beacons of Minas Tirith, if there are any other zoms in the area, the call is passed along. Zombie Zack now moves with surprising accuracy toward the zom that first issued that initial “I found food” call.

As it turns out, it is a pack of college frat douches that are now on the run, not realizing they are running right towards Zombie Zack. Once Zack sees that sweet, sweet meat that has been marinated in Jägermeister and Axe Body Spray, he then issues the “I found food” call.

Now, unfortunately in our group of frat boys, there was the fat kid with comedic nickname “Tiny” who impressed everyone with how quickly he could shotgun a beer. But Tiny failed to work on his cardio and Zombie Zack drug him to the ground. It was then the smorgasbord began. Now, if you think the “I found food” call is loud, step it up about 25% in volume and duration to understand the “I am actually eating food” call. This also brings all the other zoms in the area shuffling that much faster.  

I wish I could properly describe what a zombie moan sounds like. It is a strange amalgam of a high pitched exhale of air that is somehow blended with this deep rumbling bass. However they do it, this keening has the ability to resonate. It echoes across the parking lot of the store when they wail. And like I said, that keening acts like a freaking homing beacon. It is something like whales where they can understand each other’s moans and yowls.

It doesn’t help that the ambient noise outside has dropping down to nothing. There are no more cars, trucks, air conditioners, and all that. So that keening shriek cuts through the air like a freaking knife… especially at night and usually right around the time that you have drifted off to sleep. And much like wolves or a pack of dogs howling in the night and if one lets out an odd scream, they are all going to.

I need to get an audio recording but zombies have this strange keening wail. It is an odd thing because they seem to scream without breathing. I will see what I can come up with…

 

Day 185 – Trying to Block Out Memories

They say that idle hands are the devil’s play things. And I think that is true of the mind as well. Back when Zero Hour hit, we had a lot to do when it came to barricading the store and getting everything safe against a full frontal assault on the store. Even after we were barricaded inside and things were safe, we had inventory to take. We needed to know how much product we actually had on hand and if it would be enough for us to last through our Year One Plan. Then there were modifications that had to be made to the store for showers and toilet schedules and where we were going to sleep and the rules for posting watches during the night. I would say in that first month, we barely had time to breathe, much less time to pause and reflect. Then major events kept occurring. New members and refugees kept showing up. 

But now, we have our systems down and people have started falling into a routine. I think people have come to grips with this reality and they are starting to accept the world that we live in. And now that the store is pretty much running on autopilot and we have all of our routines down, there are times where you can sit back and reflect. This is a dangerous thing to do because it can drive you crazy.

Let me see if I can just recount a small section of people close to me. My sister and her three kids are down in Oklahoma City. My dad is in Europe stationed at an Air Force base in Germany. My sort-of parents-in-law were on vacation in Tunica, Mississippi. My brother-in-laws were at a hospital and an elementary school over in Pryor. Have any of these cherished loved ones lived? And these are all people that I talked or Facebooked or emailed with on pretty much a daily basis. Where are they now? Do they need my help?

I want you to try to imagine the logistics of trying to get to my dad in Germany. He might as well be on the moon. So all you can do is just sit in your own shelter and continue to ride it out. Yes, I could probably take an armed escort and get to my brother-in-law’s house but is he even there? And if he is not and we lose someone to a bite in the process, how could I possibly justify that expenditure of resources and man power to the group? The intentions are noble but the risk is too great for a reward that is so improbable.

So all you can do is sit, wait it out, and survive. And then you look around and we still have power, water, food, weapons… For all things considered, we are living high on the hog right. But right now, there could be a single mother with two kids, trapped in an attic, slowly rationing out the last can of Spam and drinking water collected from a gutter. That is the thing that pisses me off. It is my natural inclination to help those people… but we can’t.

We are not the military. We don’t have armored Humvees and proper training to go out on rescue missions. We are offering food and shelter to any that happen to come along but I feel that is not enough.

Psychologists talk all the time about closure. I guess not knowing is the worst thing of all. If I knew for certain that Rammstein Air Force Base had fallen, I could move on and stop thinking about him. Oklahoma City has been overrun. We know that. But did Piedmont fall too? It is that not knowing that just kills you…

Day 184 – Fortress of Solitude: All the Odds and Ends

Sometimes, it is inconceivable to me how Reason’s ever turned a profit and I say that because of the inventory in the store. It is amazing all the little odds and ends that are stocked around this store. Of course I am not exactly complaining about it now…

But there were a lot of things that smart shoppers would never buy here. I guess the theory was to try to snag those lake shoppers who were coming up to their vacation home and either A) forgot something or B) needed to replace something unexpectedly and didn’t want to drive all the way to Pryor or Vinita for a Walmart. Some of the things that were stocked had been in the store for quite a little while. Not like shelf merchandise that had dedicated space but those special seasonal drops that you kept stored or displayed on top of things like the ice cream freezers. We are talking about things like wicker furniture, box fans, folding beach chairs, hibachi grills. I mean, if I need some patio furniture, the grocery store is not the first place I think about for bargains.

The same goes for items on the HBC aisle. There are things like toasters, Panini presses, quesadilla makers, alarm clocks, the plastic corn on the cob skewers, salt shakers, that 16 foot section of tools, hammers, duct tape… This is all for what is called “impulse buying.” The theory is that you know you need a hammer and you are already here in the store, so rather than head over to the hardware store after you have your groceries, you will pay 50-cents extra just to go ahead and get it now. Like I said, smart shoppers probably would just wait.

But I gotta tell you, I am really glad we have all this kind of stuff here. Some sections are completely worthless. That 12 foot section of greeting cards? Pretty much a giant waste of space. The office/school supplies are pretty useful. We did waste about half of a ream of paper from the copier on a paper airplane contest but given the 20+ other reams of paper we have in back stock, I think we will be okay.    

Still, it is quite amazing the things that you take for granted until you don’t have easy access to them. Thankfully we had an entire end cap display section of batteries, and flashlights, a completely full shelf and backroom back stock of things like bandages, Band-Aids, gauze, iodine, alcohol and peroxide. What would people out on the road give for the simple things like plaque rinse, toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, and a fresh toothbrush every month?

Sometimes, it really is the little things in life…  

Day 183 – Our Line in the Sand; This Far, No Farther

In the last six months, we’ve lost five members of our group to these zombies. We lost Diane so early we didn’t get enough time to learn about her. The loss of Keith was very hard on the crew that made it over from ACE Hardware. The loss of Audrey was more because of her own mistake. No one blaming her for hoping her boyfriend was alive but she lost sight of the threat and that cost her her life. Dillon went MIA while on a scouting mission so we don’t know if he is really gone but I certainly do not see him as a coward that would just haul off and flee. And then there was the loss of Fred but Fred died for a mission that loaded us down with so much ammo that we could actually go on the offensive if we wanted to. I think he would agree that was a sacrifice that he was proud to make.

We are not going to lose another member. Our home is secure. We have plenty of supplies. Every day we seem to learn more about our enemy and perfect our techniques when it comes to dealing with them. That mystery fog has burned away. We know what we are dealing with now and we know how to combat them.   

We are not going to lose another member to that despicable scourge outside. We are battening down the hatches and we are going to ride this out. This is the part where the President tells the troops going into battle that we are going to live on and we are going to survive.

If you are out there, if you are reading this, then you can do it too. Believe me, if a bunch of hicks from Oklahoma can commandeer a grocery store and ride it out with very little military training, then you can survive too.

If you are out there and you can get to us, yes, we will take you in. We have more than enough supplies. We want to help you. Just please don’t take offense if we do quarantine you for a few days to make sure you are cool. We know infection timetables and such pretty much make the quarantine zone obsolete now that we know what we are dealing with. But there are still nutjobs out there that we have to be mindful of. If you understand all that and want to be a part of our crew, please, join us. Bring your weapons and we can provide safety.  

I am not promising anyone a better leadership environment than what Fred provided. I am not saying I am better than him by any stretch of the imagination. And none of the people that we lost was a result of his leadership. But this is it. I am drawing our line in the sand. On this day, October 28^th, 2013, we are not losing another member to those freaking beasts outside our door.

Keep fighting the good fight, everyone.  

Day 181 – Happy Half Anniversary?

Tomorrow marks the halfway point in our journey. The goal continues to be one year spent here in the store. If we can accomplish this, we believe that the decomposition of the zombies stalking around out there will eliminate enough of their ranks that we will be able to go into a more offensive mode instead of playing the defensive game. So tomorrow, we are celebrating the six-month mark.

My wife used to make a big deal about half-birthdays. I think with my birthday being so close to Christmas, she used it as an opportunity to make the day somewhat special. The house was already decorated for two weeks when my birthday rolled around on Dec. 10^th. December babies do tend to miss out on things like streamers and Happy Birthday decoration because they get lost in the glow of trees and tinsel.

Still, six month is a pretty good accomplishment. You would hear all these horror stories about what your life expectancy in war was depending on what your job was. Like in Viet Nam, helicopter door gunners had a life expectancy of a few minutes. I may be pulling that statistic out of my ass. But still, I would be curious to see what the life expectancy some nerd with a computer could generate for a complete breakdown of society as the result of rampaging undead cannibals. I’m betting it is not six months.

And near as we can tell, no one is dropping weight. We don’t look like Survivor contestants. Everyone is getting vitamin supplements, lots of water, rest, exercise… No one is sitting the bar drinking with an imaginary bartender Jack Nicholson style. I mean, as far as the end of the world goes, we are doing pretty good.

I would not go so far as to say that we are looking towards the future but people are making plans for winter. Everyone is looking for ways to improve our living conditions. Morale is high. Surprisingly so. I think sharing the burden is helping. Everyone seems to be part of this elaborately silent support system where we are propping each other by not talking about it. Therapists would probably frown on us not talking about it as much but what are we going to say to each other?

Survivor 1: “Man, having all those zombies out there really sucks.”

Survivor 2: “Yeah, it does.”

What else can we really say to one another? Usually our therapy comes in the form of loading the rifles. When that clip of ammunition slams home and you rise over that retaining wall, things become remarkably black and white.

What is wrong? I am angry.

Why? Because zombies destroyed life as we know it.

What can you do to fix this? Destroy all zombies.

Here is your weapon. Fire away. Case closed. Problem solved. Thank you, Dr. Melfi. Tell Dr. Frasier Crane he no longer needed on hold. There is something very soothing when you sight that scope in properly and the black circles go away. You breathe out and squeeze that trigger. Boom! Well, with the silencers it is more like “Pfffthh.” But another undead walker drops to the deck.

That is our therapy. That is why we have lasted six months. And that is why we will last six more. I just try not to think of the mathematically logic that there is the potential for there to be about 7 billion zoms on the planet…        

Happy Half-Birthday to Us.

Day 180 – Still Finding Unique Ways to Pass the Time

We used to run through all sorts of supplies back when the store was up and running at full capacity. In the Video Department, there is a copier machine where customers could make copies for ten cents. And then there are all kinds of printers around the store for reports. Because of this, we keep a pretty healthy stock of paper on hand. There are reams of paper kept in the Video Department.

I know that this paper was constantly needing to be replaced when we were up and running. Now, with the business being ground to a halt, that paper barely even gets used anymore.

I think if anyone using the most paper, it has to be Alex. He passes a lot of time drawing but no one is complaining at all because most people have no real need for paper. And that is just the office copy paper. We have notebooks and Post-It notes and loose leaf lined paper (regular and college ruled). So we are stocked up in that department.

I think one of the more unique things done with the paper is that Judy (not Hobbit Judy, Demo Judy) has been teaching herself Origami. As far as I know, she never had any formal training before. She just grabbed a ream of paper and started folding. I will tell you this, she has gotten pretty good. I mean you can see the stuff that she is making. By that, I mean her cranes look like cranes or birds or whatever. And we have enough of paper in back stock to keep her folding until the cows come home…

With that said, it kind of makes you wonder. I think it is safe to say that the United States is considered a land of plenty. Given what we have seen so far, would it be safe to say that we have lost at least half of the population? Realistically speaking, has 90% of America been wiped off the map? I guess we won’t know until official government findings come out… if an official government even exists. So let’s just say 75% of the population is gone and we have halted all production. There is no more manufacturing. How long could a population exist on what we have in America right now?

We are pretty tight with all of our resources right now. Trash is rather minimal right now. We have kind of taken a Native American route where we are trying to use everything and reuse things to make up for things we don’t have anymore.

But I mean things like cars. We don’t make any more cars. Every person now just pulls a Group 2 like Eric and Justin. They just snatch a car off the lot and run it until something goes wrong. How many brand new cars are out there? Keep in mind that 75% of the population is shambling around and looking for brains to eat.

Things like blood in hospitals are going to be in short supply and the leafy greens of vegetables would need to be replaced quickly. But how long could we go with what we have right now before we could go back to feel like we are living a “normal” life?

If we can survive this thing… If we can beat back these zoms and reclaim the world for us, I really think we could get back to normal. The graveyards are going to be pretty full. (That is a joke. Kinda. I am fully aware that we would just have to do mass graves and bury them under with backhoes.)

But this is not like our country has been decimated by war. This is a biological war. If Beverly Hills is still standing, all those mansions are just waiting to be lived in and those Lamborghinis are just waiting to be driven… Oh well, we have to survive it first…     

Day 179 – Zombiology 101: Getting Our Vlad On…

Back in September, I cooked up this plan that we tentatively called “the Bob Initiative” that had the potential to keep us safe but could also make us look like demented serial killers… Allow me to explain.

Do you know the legend of Jack of the Lantern? In life, Jack was a sinister vagabond who tricked the Devil and made Old Scratch promise to never take his soul. When he died, Jack was too evil to go to Heaven and Satan met him at the gates of Hell refusing him entrance. So Jack was condemned to wander through limbo, lighting his way through the darkness with a small piece of hellfire that he kept in a hollowed out pumpkin. On All Hallow’s Eve, when the veil between the land of the living and the land of the dead was thinnest, Jack would push through once more into the land of the living, looking for a place for eternal rest.

Families would place pumpkins carved with faces on their doorsteps with candles inside them. Jack would see the pumpkins and assume that some other restless spirit had already claimed the house for themselves. It was a way to ward off the evil spirit known as Jack of the Lantern. True story.

Now, I want you keep that story in the back of your mind… And please understand, if taken out of context, what I am about to tell you seems tremendously horrible. However, please note that we have not descended down into madness quite yet. So, first of all…

     Q: What do call a cow with no legs? 

     A: Ground Beef.

If you don’t like that one…

     Q: What do you call a dog with no legs?

     A: It doesn’t matter. He is not going to come to you.

Funny? Absolutely. But within that context, there is a real bona fide fact. A zombie with no arms and no legs is not a threat unless you are close enough for them to bite you. Then a quick removing of the jaw or teeth makes them about a .0001% of a threat. So, the guys had an idea.

Armed and outfitted with protective gear, they isolated a single zom and lured them into the “kill box.” Once there, the zom was beaten to the ground and stunned through clubbing blows. Remember our earlier articles. Zoms are easy to knock down because of their poor balance and then they are easier to attack when prone. So, our crew wrapped the head in our industrial shrink wrap (they don’t suffocate because they don’t breathe) and their arms and legs were then hacked off by the collection of wood axes that we swiped from ACE Hardware. And then just for good measure, we pulled an Edward Norton in American History X and curb stomped his punk ass.

So you have this armless, legless, jawless zom. The first one we named Bob. (Yes, as in “up and down in the water.”) Bob was then attached to a T-Post via the shrink wrap, taken out to the far corner of our perimeter, and staked into the ground.

He continues to thrash about, moan and wail and gnash his teeth (kinda)… but he isn’t going anywhere. Once we retreated back to safety, we started watching Bob through binoculars. With no food source in Bob’s perceptive range, eventually he settled down and just kept looking around for something – anything – to come into his range.

So, the idea behind the concept is that if there are already zoms in the area, then new zoms coming into the area will assume that any food has already been consumed and they will shuffle and shamble off somewhere else. However, some believe that by staking zoms outside our building, it could just draw more in to our area. I guess at this point that might not be much of an issue because we could make more Bobs out of them. The question is if a large shamble of zoms comes through, say they are just walking down the highway as we have seen them do, will they stop and take more of a notice because we have zoms staked outside. Would we be better off just continuing to make like a hole in the world, hunkering down, and hiding if and when they come past?

The argument is that we should try it and if the Bobs do complicate things, we can always snipe them from our rooftop position and go back to a square one.

But please, if you attempt this, do not get lulled into a false sense of security. One bite is all it takes. Remember that.

Day 178 – The Creation Point of a Shamble

The arrival and subsequent departure of Ray, Michelle, and Kim got me thinking. In zombie movies, as an audience member your first knee-jerk reaction is always, “Shoot them in the head, stupid!” I think we all have that attitude because we know what situation we are in. We saw the trailers. Everyone loves Matt Damon and we all saw that one shot where Sofia Vergara was pulling off her dress to reveal bra and panties. And yes, after we got home, we searched for the trailer on YouTube just so we could catch that shot again. We knew from the beginning that this was a zombie movie. We knew that the only way to deal with these monsters was to destroy the brain and you get impatient with the characters in the story because they haven’t figured it out yet. That is pop culture for you.

I want you to rewind and remember what I told you about Zero Hour. The first big collection of these zoms was the ones that came bursting out of that nursing home. They had been dead for all of ten minutes before their bodies reanimated. So with the exception of their milky eyes with yellow bloodshot running through them, they looked human. They didn’t stink. They didn’t even look dead. They just looked sick. And unless you are some psychopathic killer, your first instinct is to help someone not brainpan them with a claw hammer from the toolbox in the back of your pickup.  

Now, I am just postulating a theory here. But imagine a hotspot of these things popped up overnight, say within a hospital. Doctors and nurses would be trying to diagnose what the problem was. They would be making calls up the chain of command probably all the way to the CDC. They wouldn’t start running and barricading themselves behind closed doors because they would want to treat the infected. But remember, they would have no idea what they were dealing with.

When my then wife was going to school to be a nurse, I was always afraid of her getting stuck with a rogue needle or coming into contact with some flesh-eating bacteria. They know it is unlikely but it is part of the job. So they would all be standing as the first line of defense for the public against some outbreak. And that is why most of them probably fell to the infected.

I cannot stress enough how fast something like this spread. And the sheer lethality of the Kharon Virus… I think the only way to prevent something like this would have been to cap it in three days. After that, Clara bar the barn door.

So now, imagine this overrun hospital set in a major metropolitan area. Once these things spilled out onto the streets and started chomping on anything that moved, it would be chaos. And what is worse, there would be no protocols for the local authorities to deal with this. Sure, we know now that these are the walking dead but what if it turned out that these were living breathing subjects. Imagine the YouTube videos that would pop up and public outcry if cops were shooting sick people in the head…

This had to have been how the cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Dallas were overrun. New York City? Manhattan? I think there would be so little hope. Now, keep in mind that was 178 days ago. Now, the hordes are roving. I am quite certain none of them really have knowledge of where they are going. But with whatever brain function they have left, they must have figured it out. There is no food here. There must be food somewhere else. And that is why I am guessing that a large portion of them are now on the move.  This is all a theory but it sure does sound solid to me.

And if these things move in a herd, a school, a shamble of zoms, then the more zoms the shamble, the more zoms are likely to follow. Next thing you know, you have a horde so big you cannot even begin to fight them. And what if that horde wants inside here? Can we keep them out? 

Day 177 – FoS: Poppin’ Pills… But In A Good Way

I guess maybe it is because I am (or was) of a lower income status but there is a lot of stuff in a grocery store that you just kind of overlook and pass by. Your income is limited and so some things just never make it onto your radar. There were certain aisles in the grocery store that you just never went down. I do not really need to go down the aisle where they kept the Ensure or the Glucerna. Or the diabetic granola bars. Whatever. Not since Alex was a baby did I have any reason to go down the aisle with all the baby food. And one of the biggest examples is basically the whole front of the pharmacy.

The products in front of the pharmacy are stacked deep but not sold cheap. Basically you have hundreds of bottles of vitamins, pills, extracts, oils and such that I never thought about purchasing.

But very early in the stages of this whole thing (don’t ask me why I am just now getting around to posting about this) everyone started on a very strict regimen of vitamins. Whether it is one-a-day vitamins, Vitamin C, Super Omega-3 fish oil, whatever you need, we have all been taking vitamins on a regular basis to try to keep ourselves as healthy as possible.

Kasondra’s medical training was more about setting broken bones and patching holes and while Kim and Jennifer can tell you what medicines do what, no one here is even remotely capable of diagnosing any sort of serious medical illness. So everyone is kind of taking the Ben Franklin route where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know those zinc cold pills you are supposed to take whenever you feel yourself getting sick? We have those portioned and rationed out for all our members so that when the weather gets colder, people will just take them like a multi-vitamin every day to keep us in top condition.

I have to be completely honest with you though. I mean we all know the importance of things like Vitamin A, B, and C. But Tree Oil? Quercetin? What is this stuff even supposed to do for you? There are all types of extracts and oils. I don’t have the first clue what to do with all of this stuff but still, I am glad that we have it. 

Day 176 – The Dangerous Side of Survivor Guilt

I have mentioned before how the store is big enough where a lot of people can find their own niche. Everyone seems to have their own little cubby holes where they can go to if they need to get away and spend time alone. I just found out that Tommy’s private corner is the Pharmacy.

The windows to the Pharmacy have these roll down security gates so they can seal it off when the Pharmacy is closed but the rest of the store is still open for business. We’ve locked away almost all medical resources in the department. We even moved the stuff that is normally out in the open – aspirin, alcohol, things like that – into the “behind the counter” area of the department. It is just a security issue. The Pharmacy also has the most windows that let you see out to the ground floor level of the parking lot. In the first sortie missions outside, we barricaded cars from the parking lot so that direct contact couldn’t be made and back in September, I told you about how we club zombie heads off using a length of rope and a cinderblock and baiting them in with meat in the drive-thru bank drawer. Well, that window above the bank drawer is still pretty open.

I came into the Pharmacy to get some butt putty because I had a horrible case of the mud butt. Wait, that is too personal. I needed some feminine wash? Okay, that is just implausible. Let’s just say I had a headache.

And there was Tommy, in the dark, looking out the window at the zombies out shambling and shuffling in the parking lot and at the Party Mart across the street. He did that thing where you try to clean up as best you can when you try not to let anyone know that you have been sitting alone in the dark crying. But I have pulled that trick too many times not myself not to recognize the signs. The coughing, the frantic looking around so you can pretend you were reading something, the quick, sharp inhalations of breath. And then I saw his phone.

Cell service has been down for months. We haven’t been able to connect for a while now. People don’t carry pictures of their kids in their wallets anymore. They carry pictures on their cell phones. And Tommy has a boat load of pictures on his phone. Back before the world when to crap, it seemed like every Monday he would come in with pics from their Sunday adventures. Pictures or videos. They were always going to the zoo or to their Grandma’s back pasture to hunt arrowhead or to the park or out shopping. Tommy took his kids everywhere. Like every parent, he would bitch and complain about things like the cost of getting all of them drinks, the inevitable spill at a restaurant, or how they cannot go to the Tulsa Zoo and NOT ride the train. But the dude has a season pass to the zoo, so I knew secretly he loved it.

But Tommy stares at the zombies. I mean, like, serial killer stares at them. He is also the most adamant about “conserving ammo” but I think that is a cover because he wants to wade out there with a shovel or a sledge hammer and go psycho ballistic on them to vent his rage. Now before you judge him, I want you to consider something.

Tommy believes that zoms ate his children.

Not to go all Matthew McConaughey in A Time To Kill on you, I want to imagine a precious little girl with ribbons in her hair, missing a few baby teeth. She has a favorite blanket, a favorite stuffed animal. She has a ladybug bed that she sleeps in. She is nervous about going to kindergarten next year but she wants to be in big school like her brother and sister. This is a little girl that draws pictures and races to see her daddy every day when he gets home from work. She asks the same question every day with a   gap toothed grin, “Did you bring me a present?” And daddy just smiles and says, “Not today, sweetheart.”

Well, that is Tommy’s baby girl.

Now imagine that little girl scared and screaming as a host of dead walkers close in on her. Thankfully, she goes into shock and passes out quickly as chomping mouths descend on her. She dies from blood loss from the savagery of the bites. And left to their own devices that shamble of zombies eventually consume almost every bit of her. And there is nothing you can do about it because you are trapped an hour away in a grocery store.

While your baby girl was being ripped to pieces, you were sitting in a grocery store doing the math on how much pop or sparkling water each person could drink so everyone could survive the year… That, my friends, is what you call survivor guilt. And I think it is getting the best of Tommy.

Now, his family could be alive somewhere. It is possible. But not knowing is what is driving Tommy crazy. I am worried for my friend. I am. But I don’t know if bringing it up is a good thing. Should I just let him work his way through it himself? Do I just not mention it at all?

Regardless, I think if Tommy wandered outside with a sledgehammer in each hand, he would lay waste to a whole parking lot full of these things if we let him. Such anger is wonderful if channeled properly. But if he loses it, as much as I hate to say it, he could be a real danger to all of us. And given Tommy’s size and strength, there is not one of us in here that could take him on alone. If he wants outside to go zombie smashing, none of us could stop him.

I keep hoping Tommy’s phone will ring and it will be his wife and kids on the other end, saying they are safe… But I know that isn’t going to happen.

Day 174 – Nature of Man: Good vs. Evil

Remember way back when, when you were a senior in high school and you had to read The Lord of the Flies? In that book, the author was asking the question is man inherently good and it is the laws of society that turns him evil or is man inherently evil and it is the laws of society that keep men in check?

I guess there is a lot of contributing factors. I mean, a person can be the nicest person in the world but the wrong circumstances can turn people into savages. That is what Alan Moore was trying to prove in Batman: The Killing Joke is that the only difference between The Joker and everyone else is one bad day.  

I like to think that I am a really nice person that is willing to help anyone around me. But when my wife had her affair, I entertained all sorts of fantasies of emptying my gun clip into that rat#$%^ scumbag. I constantly imagine her pulling into my driveway and me flinging up my garage door and emptying rounds into the passenger side of her sports car that I bought the down payment on and into her boyfriend. So if pushed to extremes, anyone can descend down into madness.

But what is man inherently? Are they naturally good or naturally evil? Look around. Law and order, any semblance of authority is gone. So it is very easy for man to degenerate down into a primal state. We have yet to see that.

When Eric and his group made it in, they were just scared and seeking shelter. Janet has made emergency ration packs for people that might pass by that might need help. In theory, we have a clear cut us-vs.-them scenario where all of humanity needs to bond together to fight the undead. This kind of goes back to my 9-11 article in that, while the zombies are not a unified, organized army, they for damn sure all have the same intentions. So we need to be bonded together as well. It needs to be us versus them. Their side is only warring with each other over who gets to eat the most out of our corpses. So we need to have a similar unity. No dissention. We all need to work together.

But I feel like I can say that because we are sitting on a mountain of food. What if I was out there, on the run, desperate, dragging Alex, with only five bullets left and zombies closing in? If I was on the outside, I am getting into Reasor’s by any means possible. I want safety. I want food.

Brad’s group? We knew them. They were getting in. Eric’s group? Sporting a police dog, a married couple, bags full of medicine and two hot chicks with sweet racks? They were getting in. But what if a sausage fest of redneck Duck Dynasty commandos showed up? What if it is a busload of prisoner all wearing penitentiary-issued jumpsuits?  Are we opening up the doors to them?

And even worse, what if we say no and then they decide they are low on fuel and bullets and decide they are getting in here at all costs. They rip the doors off the hinges. Then what if before we can make repairs, a horde comes shambling through?  

I remember looking around at the world before all this. I used to live by the belief that opportunity makes the thief and a thief with no opportunity calls himself an honest man. I am pretty much as anti-drug that you could get. I despise all sorts of illegal drugs. But if someone was downloading a CD off the internet or burning a copy of a DVD, what did I care? I guess the difference is that I don’t consider those things to be “evil.” They are illegal, yes, but not evil.

Unfortunately, there was very much evil in the world. Child molestation, domestic violence, murder, kidnapping, armed robbery… That stuff was in the news every day. So here is my question, we seem to be safe and secure here in our little bubble. I am aware that we lucked into a gold mine when it came to the outbreak. But what of the rest of the world?

Are they holding on to their humanity? Is it dog-eat-dog out there? And maybe if it isn’t there yet, maybe it will be when the food starts to run out. Are the people that were ready to abandon their humanity more suited for this zombie world? And if so, did they elevate and survive better than those that still wanted to cling to the old world?

And as things continue to spiral out of control, will things only get progressively worse? Maybe we are all just products of our environment. I am reminded of the wonderful philosopher Quark who once said:  
 

“Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.”

Day 173 – We Continue to Serve

I am proud to announce that we have new signs of life. Our group was peacefully approached by a small carload of three people: two women and one man. They are making a cross-country road trip. They announced their intentions quite early. They were looking for a place to hole up for the night, maybe some gas and a little bit of supplies. We were more than happy to accommodate them.

I know that this is a risky thing that we did and unless they are playing a long con game, they were willing to surrender their arms peacefully. We refused. The logic is if things go down, that extra weapon might be the difference between life and death either for them or for one of our family. They had a good vibe about them so we allowed them to integrate.

Ray and Michelle Banion and Kim Fischer have survived all the way from Georgia. They have said that intermittent transmissions on the Emergency Broadcast Network have called for people to make their way to Denver. Supposedly, there is a military safe zone there. We aren’t packing our bags just yet but they seem pretty confident. They are confident enough that they are wanting to move on tomorrow.

Supposedly, there is still a little bit of traffic along the cross country highways provided you can avoid the roving hordes. That is the biggest threat to any survivor right now. And according to Ray, these are not small bands. They number in the thousands. In the tens of thousands. No vehicle is ramming its way through a crowd of ten thousand zombies. The only way to combat something like that would have to be through air superiority. Maybe that is why we are still seeing so much helicopter activity. It is possible that the Air Force is launching old style napalm drops where they are flash frying the hordes along the highways?

When we asked why Denver, apparently there is something called the Lazarus Formula. I supposed if the government had time to brand this contagion as Kharon, they had to come up with a name for the cure.

Lazarus: He who returned from the dead. Don’t think the poignancy of that name escaped us. I seriously doubt that any person could be brought back from the brink once they have died but maybe it stops the fever. Maybe there is a cure.

I want to hope. I really do. Like Fox Mulder said, “I want to believe.”

Day 172 – Zombiology 101: Herd Mentality

I know it may not seem like it to look at me (or I guess in your case “read what I write”) but before all of this happened, I was a country boy. I may not have been a country boy in the fact that I never wore a cowboy hat or cowboy boots. I had my “sh*t kicker” shoes, which are to say the old sneakers that I wore when I did yard work. But when you grow up in a town of 800 people, it is impossible to be classified as “city.” I will admit I like my air conditioned and I can tell you more about programming HTML language than tracking down whitetail bucks. But, much like the town population of Adair, when you have 120 acres as your backyard, you cannot be “citified.”

I had a riding lawnmower because my lawn was too big to push mow, I would dodge snakes when running out in the back pasture. I could lie in my bed at night and hear the coyotes howl. (In Oklahoma, they are pronounced “kai-oats” not “kai-o-tees.”) And Alex and I would often go down to the creek to measure how high the water rose after heavy rains. I’ve separated cows into their herds, banded a few (don’t ask), bottle fed a small handful, and helped my father-in-law put out feed. For those reasons, I would say I qualify as more country than city.

As I mentioned, I would often run in my back pasture. But being a big guy, it is embarrassing to run on the road. I don’t want what few neighbors I have to see me attempting to exercise and when you are from a small town and people see you walking on the side of the road every other car will pull over to see if you need a lift home.

So I would run out in the back pasture where the cows would graze and I saw my fair share of “herd mentality.” In many ways, zombies are not too different from cows in their behavior. They utilize a herd mentality.

I don’t know how the decided who the alpha is but if you can get one or two headed in one direction (say chasing someone) then it is not too hard to get all the rest of them shambling in that direction. They can be lured.

And if they can be lured, that means they can be lured away. Now, I do not want to lull you into a false sense of security but please keep in mind that you are not dealing with rocket scientists. They are not strategists. They are not smart. This means they can be fooled, they can be tricked, and they can be lured into scenarios that can give you the advantage. You just have to figure out what is the best scenario for you to utilize your advantages.

You are fighting against an opponent that is incredibly stupid but the yang to that yin is that you are also fighting against an opponent that is crushingly relentless and more often than not outnumbers you. 

Find a way to exploit that weakness and you gain a tremendous fighting chance. Treat these things like cattle that they are because point of fact is they are dumber than cows. Use that to your advantage…

More later.

Day 171 – The Exit Strategy

They say to get over a fear you need 100 positive instances surrounding that fear to conquer it. So if you are afraid of snakes, you need 100 positive instances with snakes and you won’t be scared of them anymore. When we lost Fred, no one even remotely thought about another sortie mission. We overstepped our bounds. We overreached. And we lost Fred for our greed.

I will tell you right now that Fred would disagree with all of them. That ammo could be the difference between all of us living and dying at some point down the road. I know for a fact that Fred felt he did not die in vain. Regardless, no one is really thinking about going back outside for a while. Eventually, I am sure we will start up sortie missions again.

Well, in talking with Brian, I think we have found a reason to head out. We are going to wait until it gets cold and we have freezing temperatures on our side but Brian is thinking about time for after Year One. How are we going to pack up and leave out of here in May?

We mulled over a variety of options and I think we have a pretty good plan but it is also not something that we have to hurry up and get finished right now. We can take our time and plan everything out very well. Again, contingencies for contingencies. That is the key.

So, the goal is to get to Adair Schools and liberate at least three buses from their bus barn. Brian saw them from the highway on their way here and he even had the sortie team check on the way into Pryor to see if they were still available. (Again, Brian thinks long term so he was already kicking these ideas around when I came to him.)

The plan is to strip them down into mobile fortresses that we can sleep on, carry food on, and on one bus carry fuel reserves. With the size and durability, I feel that school buses will make excellent choices. I think we could make bunk beds, carry more than enough supplies, and travel far enough to reach some military base, safe haven, or port in the storm where other survivors have barricade themselves safely.

So if you are out there… If you are reading this and your situation is better than ours, please let us know. Contact us. If you have internet, you have email. Please let us know so we can plot a destination and start calculating fuel needs.

If anyone is out there… Please, let someone be out there…

Day 170 – Fortress of Solitude: Escaping The Zom’Poc Through Fiction

I read a statistic one time (and I might be pulling this out of my butt) but half of all the books sold are grouped into those Harlequin romance novels that have Fabio on the cover with his shirt open and his hair all flowing in the wind. I don’t know if that is true or not. Man, that Fifty Shades of Gray blew up last year or whenever it came out.

Thankfully, our store always kept a pretty substantial collection of novels and magazines in stock. Admittedly, not every magazine and book is going to be of interest to me but I am pretty darn happy that we have these kinds of entertainment.

It is all about offering that distraction so we can forget about the world outside and retreat into a different world, if only for a little while. If I am not blogging before bed, I do like to try to read.

The magazines though… Man, it is amazing the crap that was covered by the “media.” Do we really care about how so-and-so decorated their home or which celebrity wore it best on red carpet of the movie premiere? And there are a lot of fashion and style magazine that are out there. A lot. I never understood the whole fashion thing anyway but, man, it is amazing how the whole perspective have changed.

All these things that we thought were so important… They really don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. But it is all about entertainment. Be it video games, reading fictional stories, watching TV, it is all just a big waste of time. You could argue that lifting weights and flag football helps you with your fitness goals. Reading nonfiction books about certain survival techniques sure could save your life – especially in this scenario we are in now. I suppose we can say that learning math can help you with your rationing food and such. All those things could improve your life.

Nowadays, knowing the proper Paladin DPS rotation on World of Warcraft doesn’t really help you. Knowing the words to a bunch of Eminem songs is not going to help you. Having seen all the episodes to Seinfeld doesn’t help you much in the post apocalypse world.

I see this. I recognize this. But thanks to the popularity of the HBO show Game of Thrones, the George R.R. Martin novels were on the shelf amongst all the other paperbacks. So I dug into that book and started reading before bed almost from day one of the siege. And why is this?

The only answer I can come up with is that the human brain cannot be on 100% of the time. It is impossible. You have to have distractions. I think this is why movie night is so popular. I am not the only one that reads either. I guess we all want to have the escape every now and again…

I am always looking for a silver lining with this whole zombie apocalypse thing. I guess the best thing we can say is that now we don’t have to hear about the Kardashians anymore. So, yeah, totally worth it.

Day 169 – Whup, whup, whup-whup-whup!

I have told you before how quiet the world has become. Without cars zipping around and all the hustle and bustle of the world, things can get almost scary silent. I used to love to get up really early before the world had stirred and was still tucked in under the blankets. I loved that peaceful time. I remember this one time (at band camp), we were on vacation in the Ozarks. My dad, a friend of the family, and me (I must have been 10?) took the boat out on the lake – literally – at the crack of dawn. There was no wind and I swear the lake looked like a mirror. There was not a wake or a ripple to be found. My dad jumped out of the boat and slalom skied for what must have been an hour. Man, I have not thought of that memory for years but I can still see it in my mind’s eye. I just wanted you to try to imagine the serenity that we experience in those early hours. It is calm. Wind is low. The world is peaceful. The zoms haven’t gotten all stirred up yet…

So when something comes along and disrupts that silence, everyone takes notice. And in the last 169 days, I cannot tell you any single sound that is louder than a helicopter. And what is even louder than a helicopter? Five helicopters. 

Now these guys didn’t come screaming directly over the store but off to the west, running south to north along the horizon was a military echelon made up of five Black Hawk helicopters. Kasondra confirmed their designations. Now, these things were hauling. They were flying way too fast and way too far off in the distance for us to signal them properly and they were moving so fast, I am guessing they could have flown right over us and not seen us.

However, this means we are not the only survivors out there. I cannot tell you the significance of them travelling north. I have no idea where they were coming from or where they were going. But these Black Hawks are known for their firepower, which means the military is still kicking and out there somewhere. Which means there has to be a safe zone… We just have to find it.

But it is not like we are gassing up the vehicles right now. We are going to stick with the Year One Plan and let these zombies rot off before we venture out into the great unknown. And who knows, maybe a convoy of tanks will come rolling through. It would be a lot easier to get their attention…

Needless to say, everyone seems to be rather stirred up and excited after that sighting. We still don’t really know any more than we did but it opens the imagination up to possibilities. And trained soldiers sporting M4s and grenade launchers and shotguns seemed to be a lot better equipped to handle all this than a group of grocery store employees with .22 rifles…

Still, we are not the only ones out there.