Today,
we saw a first. I can try to explain it to you but I just don’t know if you can
comprehend it. What we have experienced so far, when it comes to groupings, we
are calling them a shamble. It is a collection of zoms that lurch and stagger
along in a semi-cohesive group. They are slow but methodical. They have some
moans but as a general rule of thumb, you cannot smell them from their
distance.
What
we saw today…
Okay,
so there is a shamble of zombies and then there is a shambling horde. I want to
try to paint you a picture. Imagine a crowd of people on Black Friday
auditioning for American Idol during the halftime of the Super Bowl at Cowboys
Stadium and the first thousand entrants get a free 80” hi-def TV. That is what
we saw funneled onto Highway 82 that runs north to south across the front of
our store.
I
am not kidding when I say that there were thousands of them. Thousands. Look at
a box of toothpicks. They hold about 500 toothpicks in them. Now take about ten
boxes and dump them out on a table. And have each pick represent a zom. We
couldn’t see daylight through them. We could have fired any shot and taken out
a zom.
But
truth be told, we didn’t fire one shot. We were too afraid of drawing their
attention. Could they have swarmed over the cars blocking the entrance like
worker ants? Could they have smashed through the glass and powered their way
through? No one wanted to even chance it. So we stayed hunkered down and barely
looked over the retaining wall.
Note: Kilo was a freaking champ. He didn’t growl or even issue
a snuffle. He stood right next to Eric and Alex and was a statue. If he would
have started barking, he could have drawn the whole horde on us. It was like he
just instinctively knew when to be protective and when to shut the hell up.
As we are now 192
days in, this horde could have come from anywhere. Kansas City, Chicago, any of
the major cities up north. Man, what if they are migrating? Is that possible? I
mean we are still pretty warm here in Oklahoma but up north in the Dakota and
Canada, I suppose it could already be wintery and freezing.
I just want to know
how these things even know where they are going. Obviously, taking the highway
offers them a path of least resistance. There was a few staggering in the side
ditches but for the most part they all stayed on the road. The strange thing is
that they actually turned down Highway 28. Why it was more appealing to head
west instead of south I cannot say but they did.
Still, if there are
three rogues wandering around and they see this horde, they tend to join the
herd. There were a few stragglers (leg wounds, decomposing) that would get left
behind. We did mop up detail on the stragglers but I am betting they attracted
more to their cause than they left behind.
Still, there were
thousands. Thousands. We don’t have enough ammunition. How can you fight
that???
