Alone No More (13 page)

Worst. 

Sound. 

Ever.

I was so horrified by the sound of his teeth scratching and breaking on the tile I hardly noticed one of his hands had smashed into the bandage on my wound. Holy shit the burning agony. Using my good leg (the one with the bad foot) I kicked the shit out of him mostly to get him off of me. In the background the female pharmacist zombie was already up and coming back at me. Once I got my hip free I pulled the Sig and double tapped at the chick. First shot must’ve sailed high, but the second hit home. She went down backwards and I used my hips to escape from under the guy on top of me. I went with his motion as he tried to turn into me to bite me, and wound up bringing the barrel of the Sig right into his shattered face. I bucked the pistol twice and he fell back on top of me, really dead this time.

I think it was about then I realized I had shit myself. I forgot to mention that Mr. Journal. The uh, stomach issues I had the other day have been making cameo appearances in my underwear. Sort of a wet fart problem I’m trying to shake. It’s embarrassing, yes, but I’ve no dignity left anyway. This diarrhea has been so sneaky I’ve taken to calling my ninja shits. I never know when they’re coming, and they always kill me when they show up. It’s a good thing there aren’t any women around me. Even if I was the dead last guy on Earth I’m pretty sure I’d never get my dick wet at the rate I’m going. I am so fucking unsavory lately. I was letting out a stream of curses when I realized the zombies from outside had reached the window, and were reaching in to get me. I was a good six feet away though, and I’ve never seen them get past an obstacle that high, so I felt safe.

That was an incorrect assumption. I think there was something on the ground they could step on. A tall curb maybe? Plus their clustering action in between the truck and the building apparently was enough to get a few of them lifted up high enough to start falling into the building. I crawled backwards some more, leaving a nice fat brown streak on the floor and started firing at the silhouettes in the window. It felt like I was at the bottom of a fucking barrel with the fish being thrown in on top of me. I shot and shot and shot but the zombies kept falling through the little hole into the dark and on top of me. Figuratively of course. Although their pile inside the crowded pharmacy eventually was at my feet when they stopped coming through.

I fired the Sig until the first magazine was empty. I dropped it and slapped in the second, and aimed as carefully as I could. When that went empty I put my final magazine in, and fired the last two rounds in that. That was all she wrote. I’m out of 9mm. Dry as a nana’s vagina. I holstered it and grabbed the .45 that I’d stuck in my waistband. In the small of my back. Right where the poop was. I only had to use it twice before the stream of zombies finally dried up, but let me give you this public service message Mr. Journal:

Guns covered in poop smell terrible when they’re fired. You’re welcome.

My ears are still ringing loud as can be from all the gunfire. Guns are so fucking loud inside enclosed spaces. You’ve no idea what the hammering does to your eardrums. I guarantee in a few days when the ringing finally stops, I’ll have permanent hearing loss. I’d put money on it.

I shook the poop off the pistol and reloaded the magazine from the spare shells in my vest. When I finally got to my feet I think I did a one legged dance for joy. Then I shut the window shutter to make sure nothing else got in with me. Everything was still there. I mean everything inside the drug section of the pharmacy. Everything. All shelves stocked as full as normal. Apparently these two dropped the gate to hold up and no one since had gotten in. Unfortunately they’d died in here. Made me wonder right then why whoever had driven in the front didn’t just drive into the shutters inside the store? I found out, I’ll get there Mr. Journal. Patience. Incidentally with the window closed it may have been much warmer, but all those fucking zombie bodies were capital R RIPE. Btw I’m about to be all fucked up on vicodin Mr. Journal. Might get a little wiggy up in here shortly.

I had no idea what to grab, so I grabbed everything. Just in pill bottles alone I filled the entire duffel bag. I knew I couldn’t leave after having gotten this far with just the one bag, so I knew I needed to transport more shit somehow. I had to get into the store to get more bags or something. I slid the shutter open, checked to make sure it was clear, and then tossed the gym bag into the truck. I couldn’t reach the chainsaw, so I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to open the inside gate to get out. 

Then, like the epic jelly dong I am, I realized the pharmacist probably had the key in his pocket. Once I yanked his corpse out from under the pile of zombie and searched him, I found the keys. God what a bitch that was. Bodies are frigging heavy Mr. Journal. The lock was right at floor level, so I got the .45 ready, and got down on my belly. I tried to be as silent as I could turning the key, and was largely successful. My fear was that I’d slide the shutter up, and see nothing but feet. Bloody undead feet pressing against the shutter, trying to get inside to me.

I said a little prayer, and hefted the shutter upwards slightly. It went up much easier than I thought it would. So easy in fact the thing flew wide open. I watched it sink into the ceiling from my stomach, neck bent all the way back to get a good angle.

Then I looked into the store and saw the handful of zombies standing right there looking up like retards at the shutter going up, just like me. As fast as I could I dropped them. I break-danced myself into a better shooting position on my back and got three of them dead as a doornail before the other three realized what was going on. Fascinating fucking door for zombies. If it were portable I’d consider it a potential replacement for Lady Gaga.

I managed to squeeze off accurate shots and dropped the last three before they got to me. It took me a few minutes to get back to my feet, but once I did I realized why the driver of the vehicle hadn’t rammed the shutter. Inside the store were row after row of shelves, just like any other store. The idiot driving the SUV who rammed his way into the store flipped a few of them over and managed to drive up on top of a few of them. The SUV’s wheels were totally off the floor, and it was smack dab against a support column in the middle of the store. No way around it, and no way to push it out of the way without taking down the column. The driver was history, so maybe he or she escaped.

I scoured the store as fast as I could on my bad leg. By that point I was in near agony just taking steps. I kept an eye on the smashed out front doors, but nothing came inside. I found a handful of backpacks which would do well for transporting stuff out. I also found a few of those Sterilite plastic bins, which were pretty clutch too. Exhausting walking around with my leg all fucked up. My back is now sore as hell from favoring the one side so much. 

Most of the rest of the store was completely ransacked though. I mean to the floor empty. A few things here and there that were at best fringe useful. However, there were plenty of goodies left inside the pharmacy. For some reason condoms were in there, which was cool, as were the diabetic supplies. I’m not diabetic, but someone somewhere might be. I took everything. Any by everything, I mean fucking everything. I was tossing armloads of shit I couldn’t fit into the bags into the bed of the truck when I was wrapping up. In amazingly awesome news, there was a desktop reference for drug uses and drug interactions on the shelf. That’ll be REALLY good to have kicking around.

By then my leg was bleeding badly, and I could barely walk. It took everything I had left in me to get back through the window and into my truck. Spinning my body around to get behind the wheel was like pulling teeth. However, once I was situated, I peeled the hell out and blew that pop stand.

Drive home was… quiet. I drove in an aggressive fashion I should add. I veered to and fro to hit the zombies on the ground I’d merely disabled on the way in. I figured why leave them half or three quarters dead when it was just a few seconds of driving to get rid of them.

I made it home fine. I stopped like a good doobie and reset both vans into their V formation to prevent anyone from just driving onto the campus. The Tundra got parked near Hall E as normal, and I got everything inside and tossed into the kitchen with the rest of the shit from the farmhouse I still hadn’t sorted through. The pain was worth it.

I took a breather for a few, then got into the shower to clean my leg and ass off. I was covered in blood, gore and shit. My leg looked like absolute hell too. I’d managed to tear off the scabs that had formed already, and I am pretty sure I ripped the tears in my thigh a little bigger too. When I do things Mr. Journal I do not half ass them. If I’m gonna be fucked, I want to be totally fucked.

Cleaned it, got some Bacitracin on it, and got sitting in the kitchen to go through the book I got about medications. I found the names of a couple antibiotics recommended for wound infections and dug them out of the pile. I have several bottles of the stuff, and the book said I need to take 2 a day for 7 days and I should be good to go. I started the first pill immediately

Then I found the VICODIN! Oh sweet blessed relief. I spent the entirety of last night in a narcotic induced coma, and it was wonderful. 

I woke up fairly early today when the pills wore off though. I popped one more, stumbled my wounded ass to the basement and filled the gas tank on the generator, and then came back up here. 

The vike is finally kicking in here and there’s no pain at all anymore. I can feel the wooziness coming on though, which means that’s fucking all for fucking today Mr. Journal.

I am out of 9mm. That’s pretty shitty news. I’m also down to 10 .45 rounds. I’ve got over a thousand rounds of .22 left, which is cool. I’ve also got the .30-06 and the shotgun, but those are less than ideal to use as clearing devices. If I weren’t hurt as fuck I could use the sword more, but I can’t risk melee combat. Lol. Says the guy who punched and kicked two zombies today. One might successfully argue that I am intellectually challenged Mr. Journal.

You know what has me thinking right now Mr. Journal? Like, seriously thinking? What the fuck is the middle of town like? I blasted through how many rounds going to the fucking pharmacy? What’s Main Street near the center of town like? What about the residential areas where Steve and I used to live? I mean… shit... What’re the big cities like?

What a life. I’m gonna go lay down in my recliner with a big fat glass of orange juice made from concentrate and hope the antibiotics start to work. Today is a do nothing day, and I think I deserve it.

I might just pull through this. Cross your fingers Mr. Journal.

-Adrian

Exodus

People underestimate the value of being warm. Abigail lay on her mattress on the living room floor with the covers pulled up over her face. It had gotten so cold the last two weeks that she and her family had dragged their beds into the living room near the fireplace to stay warm at night. Her father had shut all the doors and put black trash bags on the windows to try and seal in the heat. It only marginally worked. They were also almost out of wood to burn. Soon they’d be breaking furniture apart to put in the fireplace.

Things were bad now, but they had been much worse over the fall. The Fall. It had been the fall of mankind, not just the season of autumn. Abigail Williams was one of the few people that survived until cold weather, and for that she was somewhat happy. She’d almost go so far as to say she was thankful. The world, as she and her family knew it, ended on June 23rd, 2010. Abigail herself didn’t see much of the news the first few days of the end. She was away at her private high school an hour away from home when it happened. When “it” happened.

No one had agreed on what to call the end of the world. There was no catchy moniker like Y2K, The Apocalypse, or Z-Day attached to it. Most likely because the world ate itself alive that day. Or at least it started to. At her school Abigail’s first experience with the end of the world was a car accident in the afternoon. Two of the parents had come to the expensive private school to get their son and somehow had crashed their car into the side of one of the school buildings. Abigail had rushed in to help the mother, getting dirty and covered in blood in the process. The driver, the father, had died very quickly. His arm had been severed in the accident and he bled out rapidly. Right after he passed on he got to his feet and attacked one of the school’s athletic coaches. The driver was unmistakably dead, and yet he stood up and bit the coach.

Abigail knew right there and right then everything she had ever known was going to change. She saw him sit up. She saw his pasty white skin, the ragged stump of his destroyed arm. His milky white eyes already empty of the soul. He was the undead, the nosferatu, a demon, a zombie, and he was the beginning of the end. The father bit the coach on the shoulder and pounced on his own son. Abigail ran then, she didn’t want to see what was going happen next. She’d seen enough horror movies to know what the undead do the living.

It was a long time before the 17 year old girl realized that her decisions that day saved her life. It took her weeks to forgive herself over not helping the people being attacked. She’d seen far too many people since then helping and paying the ultimate price. You can’t help the undead. They’re beyond the reach of mortal hands she knew now. Even helping the living now was dangerous. 

After the father’s initial attacks Abigail had run to the nearest building, one of her school’s administration buildings. She found a cluster of the staff standing in windows, watching the father kill his own son just a few dozen feet away. She couldn’t believe that they were just standing there, doing nothing. Looking back on it, she understood panic now.

The staff inside frantically dialed 911 over and over to no avail. No one answered, or the calls got cut off. Too many phone calls can flood the network she knew. It had to be bad everywhere else. It was bad there.