Zoic and I both went to college in Tempe, but neither of us had been there in a while. We decided that our boredom earned itself some risk, and we went for a drive. For those of you who have never been to the Valley of the Sun, Tempe is the city just South East of Phoenix, but they blend right into each other, so you wouldn’t know you drove into Tempe unless you were paying attention to the tiny signs on the side of the street. Same with Scottsdale, and Glendale, and maybe even Chandler. You always know when you’re in Mesa, though.
We took the 202 from 32nd Street to Rural. On the right side of the road was one of the most disturbing sights I have taken in thus far in the apocalypse. I would say no less than 2000 undead had gathered by Tempe Town Lake. We slowed the car to watch. They were all mostly standing. A few fed off of their fallen comrades. The rest just faced the water. Except for the ones in the water. There were a lot of them, too. Still, I thought to myself that that might have been the cleanest that lake ever was. There’s a huge celebration on the lake every New Year’s, and I guess a lot of people didn’t make it home. We drove around a bit more. We never intended to get out of the car. We were just sightseeing. And the sights were there. There were Bros all over the place, going through their post-life with about as much purpose as they had before. I’m not sure what the term is for a female bro (the ones coming to mind aren’t words that I use) but there were lots of them, too. Struck down in the middle of their New Year’s celebrations.
The Mill was still there. The undead were thick on Mill Ave., but I know better than to drive down that road anyway. The campus seemed calm. The sandwich places were empty. The Thai restaurants were empty. The other restaurant was empty, too.
Not much else to talk about really. On our way out, we did something probably stupid. We drove a distance down the 202 where we could still see the lake. We stopped the car. Zoic got out with her rifle, and she popped the inflatable pieces of the dam. The water started to drain incredibly quickly, and the hungry masses started to move away. In fact, they scattered. It was still strangely satisfying. Anyway, there was water in the river for the first time in a while.

I want to go to a shopping mall really badly. Before, shopping malls were basically inaccessible to me. I went to them, but they were never my place. I didn’t buy the food, I couldn’t afford most of the clothes. I can only imagine that it would be a significant catharsis to have free reign of the place. There’s just something about it that seems right. I never thought of myself as materialistic. I’d like to think it would be a satire on materialism, but somehow, I don’t think it would be. I like new stuff as much as anybody. And while nothing that exists is technically new anymore, it would all be new to me. Zoic and I have done a fair bit of “shopping,” but only in places we deemed safe. Salvaging thrift store clothing feels as dirty as it sounds, but there weren’t any bodies to clean up.
That is the downside of the mall. The last time I drove by it, which was quite a while ago, maybe one of the first days even, all of the doors were boarded up. I knocked. There was no answer. That could be because they didn’t hear, or maybe things had gone bad. Something tells me we would have heard from them by now if they were still in there alive. And with as many people as were in there when things went bad, I can only imagine that the place is crawling. I’d like to go, maybe try to clean it out, but it would be extremely dangerous, and fire is less useful when you’re inside.
Maybe some day we’ll have a real reason to go. Right now, it’s an unnecessary risk.