Dear Diary-December 13th, 2016
What the hell, diary?
Today started like any other day. I woke up late, jumped out of bed and did my usual bathroom routine, threw on some clean work clothes, and rushed out the door after making sure the cat had food, water, and some head scratches. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at the time; in retrospect, I suppose I should be more observant when I drive. Not that that’s going to be an issue for a while. Traffic was more of a bitch than it normally is. Dysart, which is typically like a parking lot, was backed up quite a way heading toward the I10. I just figured there was some detouring happening on some other road. It seems like there’s always some construction or some shit going on around here.
I pulled into the parking lot with about a minute to spare. I booked it out of my car, hitting the lock button as I walked fast toward the door. No one was around, which told me they had already opened the doors for shoppers. I hoped that the opening manager had already moved on from the front doors as I approached. When I flung open the door, I didn’t notice anyone around. I quickly headed toward the inner offices to clock in and then made my way to my desk without confronting anyone. Relieved, I still felt uneasy for a reason I couldn’t comprehend at the time.
I think I was so relieved to make it without being seen, that I didn’t notice things were amiss. Now I realize where that unease came from. Ambient noise was missing. There was no murmur of employees on walkies filtering through the walls. The sounds of tubs and flats and boxes being emptied were missing. The ever present annoyance of the beeping of our electronic tools wasn’t playing in the background.
Utter silence. It was eerie. It was wrong.
But I still hadn’t caught on to my own gut and what it was trying to communicate to my brain. I unloaded my own mail onto my desk, and then headed back to print out the days communications at the computer in the back room. Normally I turn on the radio before I do anything else. Why I didn’t this morning, I haven’t a clue. If I had, I might have realized what was happening sooner.
I pushed out of the employee doors and onto the main sales floor. No one was around. There were boxes strewn about, as if whomever had bowled them out took no care in where they landed. I thought it odd a manager hadn’t given them any shit but kept walking. My head down, looking at the floor as was my habit. The less eye contact you made with customers, the less they annoyed you.
That’s how I saw it. I came down the center aisles from the front of the store to the back in my usual path. Through health and beauty, across to stationary, through to housewares and then across to domestics. It was between domestics and toys that I found my first solid indication something was very wrong. A puddle of blood. I stopped, my own blood draining from my upper body, leaving a cold and clammy panic in its place. I haltingly moved forward, suddenly wishing we sold weapons and came upon my first coworker that morning. From the body shape I could tell they had been female. I didn’t recognize the identity, there was no name-tag. And there was only half a face left. The entire head had been ripped open, like a ripe cantaloupe. I could just make out the tip of the nose below the glistening red of blood and gristle. What I assumed were parts of the head were strewn nearby. The brain, was nowhere in sight.
I didn’t scream diary. It’s not my style. Neither is throwing up but I had to struggle with that one. Good thing I hadn’t had time for breakfast. At this point my brain left the vicinity, and I moved on, deeper into the back of the store like one of those dumb-ass characters from the horror movies. It didn’t take me long to find the remainder of the employees. They were strewn about from toys through electronics, and into the backroom. And this, this is where the eerie bubble of silence I hadn’t been aware I was in, burst.
There was a noise and like a complete moron I went toward it. But this time I had my wits about me enough to grab a makeshift weapon in the form of a kids plastic bat that happened to be on a tub. Good deal. Plastic. Awesome. But I crept forward toward that noise. It was a noise my brain understood before it let the rest of my body know. When I found the source, my mind tried to run and hide in the darkest corner it could find.
A fellow employee, I could tell by the color of the clothes, was on the ground, bent over another fellow employee, feasting away on the contents of the poor bastards now empty skull.
Are you fucking kidding me, diary? Zombies? I hate zombies. I find them to be the most basic asinine cliched horror trope. But this, cliched as it might be, was real and horrifying because it was right there in front of me in the very flesh.
Well diary, I’d like to say I was awesome and bad-ass but I’m not fucking stupid. I backed away, hoping the abomination wouldn’t notice me as it kept on in its gluttonous glory. I backed down the hall, and out the door and walked really fast through the field of death, looking everywhere for more of the bastards. I doubted one zombie had been able to take down a whole shift of workers on its own. And I couldn’t understand why none of them had called for help. I made it to my office where I first checked the other offices in the vicinity. I found one headless manager-can’t say I was too saddened by her demise-but the rest were empty.
I finally had my wits about me enough to turn the radio on, and I understood why no one had called for help. Or, if they had, no one had been able to come to their aid. Worldwide mass epidemic. Germ warfare or some such shit that had backfired and exposed the entire planet. It was human error. It was political conspiracies. No one knew the truth. I suspect if anyone survives, we might never know. But multitudes of people were trying to escape the larger cities hoping that they could outrun or avoid it. But if the zombies didn’t get to them, accidents were, or others taking advantage of the chaos.
All I knew at that point, was I wasn’t staying at work to await my demise. I began to leave, but I stopped, my brain now working on overdrive. Survival mode diary, it’s real. I grabbed a cart, and I made my way to the home improvement aisles where I grabbed anything that could make a weapon. Various tools, hammers, shit like that. We don’t carry much but I grabbed anything that might work to save my life. Then I made my way to the food department and I filled my cart with enough dry goods to survive on for a couple months and then I cleared the shelf of bottled water.
It wasn’t easy, diary, I was pushing that cart around obstacles. More employees that met with horrendous ends. I kind of just shut off the emotions and the rational brain for a while. I was afraid if I entertained the darkness threatening to close in on my mind, I wouldn’t make it out alive. I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t found more zombies though. I should have kept that thought out of circulation. As I was heading for the pet section, because my cat needs to eat and shit too, I came across two zombies.
You know that slow-ass shuffle usually depicted? Where you’re like, how the fuck do these bastards catch a healthy living human in the first place? That’s bullshit. So is the super speed that is also depicted in some of the newer fiction.
The truth is they move at about the speed of the average human. But, they halt sometimes, walk into shit, fall down randomly. Their brains don’t work right, after-all. They try to talk too. That’s some freaky-ass shit right there. Because the wires are crossed and when they speak they still sound human but…wrong. The words are jumbled. Their mouths smile. Their eyes are dead as hell. Cloudy. I’m not sure how they see their prey. Prey. Fuck. How fucked up is this?
Anyway, I saw those two bastards in the pet department. They were attempting to tear open bags of dog food. I’m not sure if these zombies were wrong, in zombie terms, or just desperate. But the moment they sensed my presence, they honed in like hawks. Their heads cocked to the side like damn dogs. Their faces were covered with blood, bits of brain, and hair.
Hell, there’s that urge to vomit again.
I wasn’t leaving my cart of stuff. I had a plan and a desire to survive. I pushed it along and went down an aisle, hoping to outsmart them and come around behind them. I grabbed my hammer and a large knife I had grabbed from the kitchen section on my way to pets. I turned around to look and they were on my tail. Walking, tripping occasionally. One would bump into the other and the other would push back like a fighting sibling. If it weren’t so fucking wrong it might have been comical.
I turned down an aisle that contained dish soap and I grabbed bottle after bottle and poured it behind me. They turned the corner into the aisle and slipped immediately. One went down and smacked its head hard enough on the floor that I heard the crack clear like a gun shot. The other landed on top. I watched a moment as the one on top struggled in an attempt to untangle itself and stand in the slippery goo. I started to turn and walk away, but stopped.
These had been coworkers. Fuck, I didn’t want to be there any more. But I felt I needed to try something. I retreated down the aisle and pushed my cart out of it and down the way a bit, then I headed back the way I had come, past the aisle with the still struggling zombie, and made my way toward the nail polish remover. I grabbed as many bottles as my arms could carry. I dumped these on the floor of the aisle with the zombies and headed toward the registers for the last component. Then I returned to the zombies, and one after another I opened the bottles of nail polish remover and poured them over the zombies. I grabbed a pack of dishrags from next to the soap, ripped open the package of lighters and lit the rags. I stepped back a little, dropped the makeshift torch, and then backtracked to my cart. I watched as the zombies burned. The one on the bottom never made a sound, but the one still conscious, shit man. It reminded me of that time I heard the bunny get grabbed by a hawk. I never knew bunnies could scream. It was like that but-louder. I waited until the screaming stopped. Until there was no movement. Until the smell started to make me ill. And then I quickly inspected my surroundings and then headed to the cat food and litter. My cart overflowing, I pushed it out the front doors, into the deserted parking lot, and quickly loaded up my car.
Before I got into my car, I puked into the bush. There’s a limit. I had reached mine.
Somehow I made it home, through the traffic heading to the interstate. Passed the abandoned cars. I wonder if they had been there when I went to work, and I was so in my own world that I didn’t notice.
I pulled into my driveway, watched as cars drove past me at high speed, trying to escape. The expressions the drivers had on their faces mirrored my own. Disbelief. Fear. Panic. Shock. I climbed into my car at one point while unloading, and had to wait while a zombie in a bathrobe and fuzzy blue slippers ambled down the street. It never looked my way, and I waited a long time to be sure it was far enough away before I finished unloading the car.
For now I think I’m safe. I’m locked in the house with my cat. I’m eating dry cereal though I know I should use up the milk. The cats dish is overflowing with his favorite food, and his litter pan has fresh litter. I’ve got a go-bag packed, ready if I need it. I’ll probably have to let him loose if it comes to that. He’d survive better in the wild than with me. Though I’d rather not entertain that idea yet. It would break my heart.
Maybe in a couple days I’ll head to the nearest home improvement store and stock up on boards to block the windows and doors. I Googled the nearest place to find swords too. Before the cable went out, the news said the only way to stop them was to decapitate them. Severing of the spinal column, to be precise. They aren’t living breathing beings any longer, so gun shots do nothing but speed up the decay of their body.
I know fire works as well.
I think I’ll Google where to get flame throwers as well.
I wonder how long the internet will stay up.
It’s unclear how long their bodies keep moving. What purpose the brains serve, if any. But, there’s hope that this will pass. Apparently, a few people have a natural defense against the source of the virus. They were pleading for these people to come in to local hospitals to help in any way they could before the radio signals were lost. I’m not going anywhere. Screw that.
Michelle R. Lyon