The farming experiment has not been completely fruitless. Some meager vegetables have been harvested, and others are still promising possibilities. The weather in Arizona allows for longer growing seasons (and subsequently, year-round allergies), and we’re a month or so away from the first freeze.
Zoic and I have worked out most of our problems by now. When you spend so much time with another person, it’s hard not to identify with them completely, let alone stay mad at them. Call it Stockholm Syndrome. There might be a more specific term for people who aren’t exactly captives, but I don’t know it, and there probably isn’t anyone out there left to care. Who knows. Once a stickler always a stickler. In fact, it pleases me to think that there might be someone out there surviving, living day to day just to correct this grammatical mistake or that spelling error, or to suggest new word choice. Being a stickler may be so ingrained in a person, that the infection/zombification can’t actually kill it. It makes me happy to think that the walking corpse of Lynn Truss might be out there devouring the living and taking pause at a sign that reads “Come inside for CD’s, VIDEO’S, DVD’S, and BOOK’S” as the ghost of a once quite common thought struggles to present itself.
My relationship with Zoic has changed. Improved, maybe. This sedentary lifestyle has really thrown us a bit. After more than a month of constant movement, we’ve finally gotten good at navigating these infection filled streets, and collecting food. Zoic has softened. While she’s still the tougher of the two of us, I wonder if I’m not seeing a side of her that no one before ever did. It’s certainly not a side I ever saw in school. I wonder if spending less time on the computer has helped her brain to switch gears. I don’t know.
A lot of our free time has been spent discussing the possible origins of the virus or whatever has created so many undead. One thing we’ve noticed about the zombie movies is that none of them ever seem aware of other zombie movies. They all take place in a world identical to ours, but with the exception of no zombie movies. Well, we have them. And we’ve watched them. I’m not particularly proud of that. It seems like a waste of time, or like feeding hamburger to a cow, but it’s oddly cathartic. They were wrong in many places, but right in many others. I’m not really sure what that means for our situation. I find it hard to believe that something like this could have sprung from nowhere, independent of the culture that has surrounded the genre for decades. It just doesn’t make sense. So part of me wants to think that some nerd at MIT came up with a virus that would do this because his girlfriend broke up with him or something. At least that was the only way I thought it was possible before any of this happened.
Well, I don’t want to say too much. I’d like to be able to prove to you that we’re still alive in the future, so I should save some of the updates. Not that there are many. You know what they say: sedentary agrarian societies are the best story tellers.