Like a Video Game

Wow I have never seen a 5' 2'' girl look so monstrous as Erin did when I told her my plan to go east and find my friends. See Erin grew up back east as well and moved out to Arizona because she absolutely hates the snow. So when I told her that I was going to go see if my friends back there were still alive she nearly exploded with anger. Once she was able to get out all the yelling and throwing of random stuff she reluctantly agreed to accompany me...thankfully.

I have done the trek across the country one time by myself and I couldn't ever imagine doing it alone again. Erin has made the trip quite a few times and knows the way by heart so that will make it a little easier on us. Since Erin basically is my GPS for this little adventure I agreed to let her drive. Little did I know what a pain in the ass decision that would turn out to be.

The first thing we decided was that we needed to find a running car that we could use to start our trip. The problem with that is that when the outbreak occurred many people were driving all over the country and millions of people crashed there perfectly good vehicles trying to avoid what they thought at the time were living people running through the streets. The other issue with this was that Erin insisted that the car had to be green. Here we are fighting to stay alive in a zombie infested world and Erin is still little Ms. Green...figures.

What to drive, what to drive. We figured the best thing to do was to find a dealership and just grab a new car that we knew wouldn't have any issues. Sounds easy right? Wrong!! Turns out lots of other people had the same idea but came unprepared and had been either mauled or turned into one of the creatures. SO now we are walking onto a parking lot filled with living dead and traversing what can only be described as a maze of cars trying to find a specific one, oh joy.

We traveled along until we found a VW dealership that didn't look like it had many of the creatures around it. I came up with plan to weed any of them out to help facilitate the process of locating our new car. I sat on the top of a crashed vehicle just outside of the lot with my .50 cal rifle a decided to pick of anything I saw moving. I swear I had flash backs of Halo as I popped off round after round into the creatures wandering in and out of the Beetles and the Jettas. I went through over 20 rounds hitting head shot after head shot to eliminate of possible foes. Damn if this had been a video game I would have gotten a medal or something. Blood and brains flew everywhere as the creatures dropped one by one. In the end the lot looked like something out of a horror movie. I guess that's kind of fitting since it feels like we are living in one.

Once the lot looked clear Erin and I moved in closer to start looking at the cars. I'm guessing what the people who attempted to do this before us didn't realize is that you cant just walk onto the lot grab a set of keys and expect to jump in any vehicle and drive off. I'm sure this lead to a lot of confusion for those people as they ran car to car trying to figure out which car they could start while trying to avoid the monstrosities wandering through the lots. Hell at one car we found a set of keys still in the door...with a hand still holding them, but no body to be found. Damn poor soul killed trying to escape. Lucky for me both Erin and I were smarter than that. We decided that one of us would stay in the lot and call out the vehicle numbers over the radio while the other searched for the keys inside. Of course I'm the one who headed into the building to search for the keys while Erin stayed outside in the lot that I had already cleared of creatures. Damn women I swear I'm to nice, next time she is going into the creepy building alone.

I figured I should probably go in prepared just in case there was a free stragglers left wandering around inside. I grabbed to desert eagle handguns and put them in my holsters. I strapped a 12-Gauge on my back and prepared myself for war. Little did I know at the time I wasn't the one who was going to need the mini armory I was carrying.

Once I got inside I let Erin know I was going to start searching for the key room and that she should start looking for the car she wants to take. After about 10 minutes of searching I located the keys in a small office no larger than a closet. There were hundreds of keys on the was so finding a specific one wasn't going to be as easy as I had hoped. I radioed Erin to let her know I had found them and to let me know what car she wanted. She started to call out groups of numbers relating to the vehicles in the lot. I searched up and down for each number, but had very little luck since there seemed to be no order to the organization of the keys on the wall. In between Erin's radio traffic I heard something coming from down the hall. I called out to Erin over the radio and told her to stop for a second I had to do a little investigating.

I poked my head out of the office and didn't see anything right off hand. I slowly stepped into the hallway and looked around. I felt like a kid crossing the road, "Look both ways before crossing!" I could hear my mom's voice in my head warning me. Who knew that her warning would still apply here at the end of the world as we knew it. I stopped in the middle of the hallway and listened again. The noises seemed to be coming from a cubicle about 15 feet from where I was standing. Something that we have learned about these creatures is that they respond very quickly to loud noises, so I got the genius idea to stomp my foot on the ground to try to get the attention of what ever was behind the wall. After my foot hit the ground I began to regret what I had done but alas it had already been done. I waited for a second and watched the wall. Nothing happened. So I stomped again, and again nothing. At this point I was confused and couldn't figure out what was making the noises. Slowly I walked towards the wall, gun drawn waiting for something to pop up. Still nothing. I reached the cubicle wall and crouched behind it. I double checked the two .50 hand guns to make sure the safety's were off. I jumped up with the guns out ready to start shooting. What I saw behind the wall nearly made me double over and start vomiting.

Laying next to her desk was what I have to assume was a female employee of the dealership gasping for air and bleeding out. Her neck looked like it had been torn apart by a buzz saw as it was shredded. She was on her last breaths and would not last much longer. I could barely stand to look and she stared at me waiting for her death. Knowing that she would come back to life once she died I pointed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through her brain. At least she wouldn't have to come back as one of these abominations.

As I sat thinking about what I just had to do Erin's voice came back over the radio. She had heard the gunshot and was frantic trying to make sure I was ok and still alive. Alive yes, ok no. That was one thing that had always bothered me since the outbreak had occurred. Not only had I become a killer of the undead, but now I had to kill people to save them from coming back as a rambling semblance of a human being that did nothing but kill. If I ever made it through all of this then I guess I may have some sins to atone for, but for now I did what was necessary for survival. I grabbed the radio to respond to Erin and let her know I was headed back to the key room and the building was clear.

It turns out that I had spoken to soon. As soon as I had let go of the mic button I turned to see a sprinter less than 5 feet away rushing towards me. Dammit he must have been the one that attacked the girl and I had drawn him to me when i fired the gun. The behemoth hit me like a ton of bricks. The sprinter had probably previously been a mechanic at the dealership. He was easily 6' 6'' and over 300 pounds. His mass hit me and sent me flying to the ground and skittering across the smooth floor. When I hit the ground the two guns in my hands shot out and went across the room. Great here I am with no weapons in hand with undead baby Huey standing a few feet away. I scrambled to my feet and began to run down the nearest hallway. I could hear his footsteps behind me as he gave chase. I ducked into a small office and shut the door. I dove over the desk and hit the ground behind it. No sooner did I hit the ground than I heard the door shatter and his mass hit it. Damn this guy was big and apparently he saw me as dinner. I was crouching behind the desk hiding and hoping that he would think I had disappeared.

He sat in the doorway scanning the room trying to figure out where I had gone. See the thing about these creatures is that they are not really all that intelligent. It doesn't matter how smart one may have been they had been when they were alive, once they were turned their only thought is to hunt and kill. Luckily for me this guy probably hadn't been all that smart in life and now he was even dumber in death. I watched from under the desk as he slowly turned and started to walk away. I remembered I had the shotgun strapped to my back. I grabbed the strap and pulled it around until I had my hands on the trigger. As the creature turned to exit the room having lost his prey and jumped out from behind the desk and fired off a round. The shot hit the creatures mass and sent him reeling forward. Bad shot on my part as the creature turned around and lunged for me. I swung the point of the shotgun up and blasted another round into the creature. This one hit the mark as half of his face blew off in a cloud of blood and bone. The lumbering giant fell backwards and twitched. The shot hadn't completely killed monster but had incapacitated him enough that I could go over and finish him off. I stepped up to his body, stood over him and pointed the gun at what was left of his head. I cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The pieces of his head that were left flew apart if a millisecond and ended what must have been a miserable existence for this guy.

I was sweating bullets and wondering how I had been so lucky to have survived that little surprise attack when i again heard Erin's voice over the radio. Only this time it was not Erin's meek little voice asking if I was ok, but her screaming at the top of her lungs. I hauled ass out of the office, ran back out to the lobby grabbed my handguns and made haste to the lot.

I had been careless with firing off all of those rounds and it had attracted the attention of a wandering pack of sprinters that were nearby. Dammit why had I agreed to let Erin stay out there alone. We should have never split up. I burst through the glass doors and screamed for Erin to start running towards me. She ran as fast as she could towards the doors while I tried my best to cover her. I hit 2 of the creatures in the face with .50 cal rounds while doing my best to avoid Erin. I slammed the doors shut and did my best to hold them once Erin had dove through.

As I held the doors as tight as possible Erin grabbed the shot gun from my back. I yelled for Erin to run into a cubicle for cover. She ducked behind a small wall while I let go of the doors and ran as fast as I possibly could. My body was still sore from the mass of undead that had plowed into me earlier so I wasn't able to move at full speed. I ducked behind another wall a few feet from Erin. I heard the creatures rushing in trying to hunt us down for dinner.

The four creatures that had burst through the doors were running through the lobby smashing into everything in their way. I figured it would be able to take down a few and draw them away from Erin by making a loud noise. I grabbed the computer monitor on the desk next to me and heaved it over the wall. Without knowing it I had hit one of the creatures in the face and had done nothing but piss it off more. The creatures head popped over the wall and began snarling at me. Since I wasn't expected this I jumped backwards and fired off a single round. The shot blew through the creatures eye splattering pieces of brain and flesh across the lobby.

No sooner did I see the creatures head explode than I heard Erin's shotgun go off and see a spray of blood come from the wall near her cubicle. Damn I had taught her well she was handling herself like a pro zombie killer right now. With two down that only left us with two to still drop. I peeked out from around the corner and saw the remaining two running towards Erin. Damn my mind was racing, I had to do something to stop them from getting to her. I ran out from behind the wall and did my best linebacker impression as I drove my shoulder into the nearest creature. The force knocked the both of us down to the floor. As I hit the ground I saw Erin running out from behind the wall with her shotgun ready and she started firing at the one that was still standing. She hit it with three rounds before it finally fell. She turned her attention to the one I had knocked over and pulled the trigger, but heard nothing but a echoing click. She was out of rounds and standing in the wide open. I scrambled to my feet and yelled for Erin to get out of the way. I unloaded everything I had into the creature as it slowly got to its feet. In my haste I had missed its head with every round. As it rose slowly and started to move towards us I noticed that the monitor I had thrown at them earlier was now only a few feet from me. I ran towards the monitor and grabbed it from the ground. With everything I had left a sprinted towards the now standing creature and smashed it in the head with the screen. With a dull thud the creature collapsed to the ground and stopped moving.

Exhausted Erin and I both sat in the nearest chairs in the lobby and looked at the carnage that had ensued. We had managed to kill 7 of the undead between the two of us and had come out alive. I'm not sure how long our luck can hold out before one of us gets injured in one of these fights. but for now we were alive and safe and that's what mattered.

After getting some rest and raiding what food was left in the building Erin and I decided on a car from the lot. I guess a 2010 Golf TDI isn't the worst way to travel across country after the apocalypse, at least we'll get good gas mileage.

I'm Not Alone

Finally have a chance to stop and log another entry. In the past few days a lot has occurred that I can honestly say a year ago I would have said was impossible. Its funny to think that just a little while back people obsessed over things such as cars, clothes, and other designer items. I always laughed at those people that would go out and spend $400 dollars on a purse just because it said Chanel or LV on it. Or those people that would go out and spend $100,000 dollars on a car. Those same people are now either dead or the walking dead, and here I am hot wiring their $100,000 dollar car and beating the hell out of it. The irony of the whole situation helps a little in keeping me amused while I fight for my own survival.

I guess I should make something clear before we get to far. I am not exactly alone in my little adventure here, I do have a companion moving along with me. A girl named Erin is traveling with me right now. We have known each other for almost 10 years now and always told each other that we would be around for the other if needed. I guess this situation fits the bill for that promise. Its kinda funny that of all the people I could be left with in the apocalypse I would be left with the one person in the world that I am the polar opposite of. More irony in a world of destruction.

A few things you should know about Erin. She is the essential tree-hugging hippie, green, PETA member. Before this all occurred she would be the person you would find outside of a KFC protesting their treatment of animals. Or the person who would see a woman walking in a fur coat, run up to her yell fur is murder, and throw a can of paint on her. While I'm the one who drove the hummer and ate all the meat I could, she drove a bio-diesel car and was a vegetarian. I can say that there is no way I would have ever thought that it would be her and I in the end.

So here we are the hippie and the carnivore traveling across the country trying to figure out what to do next. The arguments between us are far and few, but when they occur I even feel bad for the creatures roaming around us. Hell if I heard one of these arguments from the outside, I would try to attack us I would run (or in the case of a grazer hobble) away as fast as I could and hope I didn't get caught in the shit storm to come. Ha, who would have ever thought that I would feel sympathy for a mindless killing machine.

Well back on track. To give you a idea of the things we are facing along the way Ill tell you about our little adventure into the strip club. I know anyone reading this is thinking "WTF, A strip club???" Now hear me out at the time I thought it was a good idea. My logic was that who the hell would go to a strip club when the world is about to end. Of course this lead to a massive argument between Erin and I that escalated into her threatening to shoot me. In the end of course I won since I just took her gun away and told her I was going to leave her outside. Word of advice never listen to me when a strip club is involved regardless of the situation.

Once we got into the strip everything seemed cool. The lights were still down low and the music was going loud. Of course me being me the first thing I looked for was the booze. Come on who doesn't want to down some booze in the safety of a gentleman's club to escape the hell outside. Erin first thought of course was a little smarter, she started scavenging for anything would could use along the way. After she disappeared for a few minutes I started to hit the bottle. Sat down on one of the coaches and relaxed. For some reason my mind drifted off to my friends back east and wondered if any of them were still alive or if they had succumbed to the outbreak as well. As I started to drift off my peace and tranquility was broken by Erin running by me screaming "You Dumb Ass!!!" at the top of her lungs. After a second or two of that I finally looked back from where she had come to see why she was running. There coming out of the room she had left was 5 sprinters coming after her, and my brilliant idea to take away her gun had left her defenseless.

It turns out the the night of the outbreak in the particular club there was a bachelor party going on in a private room. Who knew? So instead of us finding a abandoned building that we could rest in we had walked into what could only be described as a nest full of creatures.

I jumped up and threw a handgun to Erin since I had left my dufflebag full of weapons behind the counter of the bar. She started shooting at the sprinters coming at us full speed. Its hard to imagine exactly how fast these brain dead beings are, but imagine being chased by a rabid wolf that has nothing on its mind other than killing you for dinner. Erin fired a round right by my head a hit a sprinter diving at my right in the head killing it instantly. Thankfully I had taught her how to shoot when this all occurred or else I would have been screwed. The creatures noticed where the shot had come from and started running toward the loud noises. To give Erin her credit she was a natural shot with that handgun. She was able to take down 2 more with shots to the head, and all this without hitting me with a single round. Unfortunately Erin had exhausted all of the rounds if the gun and was now without a weapon of any sorts. This is where my ingenuity took over and I came up with a great idea. I picked up the chair next to me a whipped it as hard as I could toward the closest sprinter. Luckily for me these things are dumb as hell and he didn't try to move out of the way at all. The chair caught it square in the midsection and knocked him over. I ran over and drove the heel of my boot square into the creatures face. The crunch of the bone as his skull collapsed was vile and gut wrenching. After three more stomps the creature finally stopped moving.

While I was busy stomping the hell out of this brain sucker (they don't actually suck brains by the way), Erin was busy running around trying to avoid the one sprinter we had left. At this point she had it on the other side of the room away from the bar where all the weapons were sitting. Of course she would be no where near the only chance she had to kill this thing. I ran to the bar, grabbed the bag and ducked under the bar. Once I had my favorite little toy out I yelled for Erin to start running towards the bar. She hoped across the stage, barely missing the greased up pole on the middle, and ran towards the bar. While she was running towards me I couldn't help but laugh, here was Erin the borderline feminist up on the stage of a strip club. If you had told me that one day Erin would be up on the stage I probably would have pissed myself laughing and yet here it was occurring in front of my own eyes. As Erin closed in on the bar area I ducked down a bit so the creature wouldn't see me and change course to go for the bigger stationary meal. Erin rounded the corner of the bar and I stood up, the creature was about 5 feet away. One second the room was filled with a loud boom from my shotgun the next the room was covered in blood and flesh from what was left of what I can only assume was the groom to be.

This is where everything goes black for a little while. See I remember firing the shotgun and watching the zombie explode, the next thing I know I'm waking up on one of the coaches in a corner with a splitting headache. It turns out Erin was so pissed at me about coming in here and not checking it before I hit the booze that she had grabbed a bottle of vodka from the bar and smacked me in the back of the head with it. Gotta say that girl has one hell of a swing with a bottle. After Erin was done yelling at me, which lasted over a hour by the way, we finally checked the rest of the rooms and barricaded the doors. I'm guessing there are not to many people out there that can say that they have slept over night in a strip club but at least now I can.

So for now we are holed up here waiting for morning. As I sit here and write this I cant get the thoughts of my friends back east out of my head. I guess I know where I'm headed now. Until I know what happened to everyone I know I will not be satisfied. I know Erin isn't going to be happy with this decision and its quite possible she will say no and walk away. I hoping she decides to keep traveling with me since I'm not sure how long I will last on my own.

What the hell happened?

When we were children growing up we all watched the scary horror films that lead us all to nightmares. We saw everything from gruesome monsters like Freddy and Jason to demons to serial killers like Jigsaw. As we watched these films we all thought "Wow that's scary but its only a movie, nothing like that would happen in real life." Well that statement is completely false at this point since something worse has occurred and wiped out nearly 95% of the population of the planet.

Right now if you are reading this then more than likely you know the answer to that question, but if by some chance you find this in the future (if we even have one) and don't know what happened Ill do my best to explain.

Before we get going to far into this I should probably tell you who I am and why I decided to write this out. My name is Pat, not going to worry about my last name since it really doesnt matter any more. I live in the great state of Arizona, one of the hottest places in the US. Im originally from Michigan but like most people from that hell hole I moved as soon as I possibly could. So I got this idea in my head to drive west to get away from it all and ended up here. I was here for 3 years before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

As far as how why I'm am writing this I just want to make a record of what I have gone through so that people who may read this later will not make any of the same mistakes I have made in my travels. It is also a sort of way out of the chaos that we live in everyday. Finally it all comes down to making sure that I remember those who I have come across and those who still out there fighting for survival.

So lets see, ah yes how this all started. Well that's a good question. For years no one had any clue as to what has caused the outbreak or how it was able to spread so quickly. It wasnt until a time later when files were uncovered that showed the people responsible and how it had been brought about. No it was not terrorists as many people initially thought but a group of misguided individuals who did not realize the consequences of their research. For now I'm not going to delve into the actual details of the organization or what they did, we'll get to all of that later...I hope.

So what is it you ask that has wiped us all out? Well that's hard to say as well. You see the things we are fighting against used to be everything living. I know that's a little ambiguous so Ill expand a little. What we are up against is nearly every living organism, including humans, on the planet. This range from the slow mundane zombie like "Grazers" (as we call them now), to the "Sprinters", and the various creature mutations we have come across. They have become feral killing machines with no regard for their own safety or that of anything around them. Hell the only reason any of us are still alive is because these things are so vicious and mindless that after wiping out the major populations they started feeding on each other.

I guess since I mentioned the "grazers" and the "sprinters" before I should probably give you some details about the things we have come across and why they are named that way. See the outbreak that caused the chaos affected different organisms differently. The grazers and aptly named because they are seen as almost acting like the zombies you would see in the old George Romero films. Slow bumbling creatures that are easy to escape but travel in large packs. The sprinters are the opposite of the grazers. They are fast and extremely edgy creatures that jump at and attack at any sound they hear. They usually travel alone since they have a tendency to attack each other as much as they do the living. The scariest things out there though are not the human organisms but the ones that started as animals and have now become something else entirely. They vary in shape and deadliness, the best thing to do is just stay away from anything you see moving.

The various roaming "monsters" are not the only issues we have to deal with for survival. The lack of supplies and distrust of anything moving has left people for scared of each other as well. At the beginning of the chaos people began to loot and steal from each other in order to try and insure their own survival. Hell I'm guessing we killed each other as much as they killed us.

So I think I'm going to start this little diary around the time that the outbreak hit the area I live in. You see I worked at a major university in Arizona that had a population of 65,000 people, hell that's more than some whole nations. Not to mention that outside of the area I lived in was the city of Phoenix, only one of the largest cities in the US. so we have a densely populated area and people who were unaware of what was spreading across the world. When the outbreak hit here is was quick to spread and the destruction was almost immediate.

The thing about this outbreak is that the effects on some people are immediate on some and take a while for others. When people become infected the only sign is some minor flu like symptoms, until it takes full control of you and you lose your free will. The people who showed immediate signs of infection where quarantined or arrested for being crazy. Little did we know at the time that those were not the only infected people.

I digress back to how it spread through Arizona. Periodically there were reports across the state of people just losing their minds and randomly attacking others, or of animals suddenly turning on their owners. The real wide spread of this occurred at the Arizona state fair. Without realizing how this spread, the fair was held and tens of thousands of people attended. In the end it only took one person to spread the disease to the rest of the state. There was a older woman at the fair with her family that was not feeling well but did not want to disappoint her grand kids. Looking back it would have slowed the spread if she had not been so damn stubborn. As she was waiting in line for the ferris wheel she slumped over for a moment and scared the kids she was escorting. A few seconds later the disease had completely taken over her free will and she began attacking those around her. People attempted to hold her down but to no avail as she thrashed and screamed, people just began to back away and wait for the police to show up. When the police arrived they told her to get down to the ground, but she refused to listen. She charged the officers and they used their bean bag rounds to bring her down. Unfortunately for them this had no affect as she felt no pain at this point and she just kept coming. She managed to tackle one of the officers and maul him viciously until she had torn large chunks of flesh from his face and arms. With no other choice available the remaining officers drew their pistols and started firing away. One thing that was learned that night was that in order to bring down someone who is infected you have to somehow stop the brain from functioning. This was discovered by the officers as the pumped round after round into the woman's body but she continued to stir and try to rise. Finally one officer walked up to her and put a bullet through the top of her head. By time this was all done though she had already done enough damage to the people that had tried to restrain her that the seeds for the outbreak had been planted. Within weeks all those who she had infected managed to infect those around them until the entire valley began to fall to the ensuing madness.

We later learned that this is similar to what occurred across the country then the world. The outbreak spread so quickly that there was no stopping it. Its funny as I sit here and write this out I am drawn back to the films I mentioned in the very beginning. At the time they were fun films that drew on our fears to entertain us. Now as I look back I see them in a different light...as P.S.A.'s designed to tell us how to survive in case this ever occurred. Well it is time to move so Ill try to give you guys some more info the next time we stop, but at this point who knows when that will be.