Rok just informed me that the man in the bible story I mentioned was Job. So, there’s that. He made fun of me for being a bad catholic student, which is something to be applauded in my opinion. Yes, I went to Catholic school, but I’ll get into that later. Anyway, I think that we should be focusing on preserving information that can help us survive. Rok says it’s the apocalypse, you better get with the Fahrenheit 451. Who the fuck is going to burn our books?

I’m trying to be good about writing this because Rok asked me to work on this with him as a project. That being said, I have pretty terrible writer’s block, and I am surprised that it has not lessened in the slightest since the world erupted into a desolate zombie wasteland. If anything, it might be worse. I feel a strange pressure to put something out into the world that is worth reading, something really good since there isn’t much left to humanity. I worry about humanity in general obviously. I feel like there has to be some people left, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to them. I feel like if I’m going to do anything, I should try to make something good. I guess some part of me thinks maybe if there is a god or alien overlord then maybe he/she/ze will see the little stragglers of humanity working really hard and make everything okay again. Something similar to the bible story about God killing that guy’s whole family to win a bet with Satan. Its not rational, but I feel like “cosmic joke” is the only explanation for the things that have been happening.

There are many parts of the apocalypse that I just can’t explain. Really, our knowledge of what’s going on is severely limited. Our usual methods of gathering information are useless. There’s no Apokipedia or Zombileaks. All we’ve got is what we’ve seen. I can’t explain why there is still electricity or running water, or Internet. I can only guess that these things are actually operated by automated systems and need little human help. I don’t know. And anyway, I’m not counting on them to last forever. But what I can explain even less is the presence of Television. Not real television. Most of the channels are nothing but bars and tone. But there is one that is not. Once channel is dedicated to playing the Slap Chop commercial over and over again. Suffice it to say that I now have it memorized, and I sometimes turn it on to feel like there’s some civilization left out there. I can only assume that, some television programmer, with only minutes left to live, put his last Earthly effort into leaving Vince on the air. Is it a sick joke? Or is it what he thought the world needed? Impossible to tell.

It’s chilling to know that there’s nothing new on TV. It means that there’s no one out there. No one creating, no one consuming. Even on lonely nights before, the television allowed us to feel the pulse of humanity. Now, we feel nothing when the television is on. But then I think, hey, maybe Vince is still out there. Maybe he’s a survivor like us, and he’s taking out the infection, and cleaning it up with a Sham Wow. Or maybe he’s been turned. Maybe some infected individual, formerly a prostitute, bit his tongue and turned him. One can only wonder.

It is possible that all of these questions will one day be answered for me. It is also possible that I will die without ever learning any of them. No time to worry about that now. Vince is on.

I’m the Zoic Rok mentioned. There’s not much to say that he hasn’t said. We’re surviving together and pooling resources, and I’m glad to have someone like him on my side. I started out the apocalypse with people who didn’t really give a damn about me in any meaningful way. Rok is a weirdo, but he’s becoming one of my favorite people in the world, mostly because he’s the only other person in the world (as far as I know). I’m not very well suited to the apocalypse, but I’m here, and I’m trying to be a good representative of the now defunct human race. So, hello. I’m here if you need anything.

Zoic and I have decided several times to build our apocalypse fort, and that means stockpiling everything we can find. So far, the actual construction hasn’t happened. Instead, we’ve got a huge pile of solar panels in the back yard, as well as quite a few mismatched bricks, and a single orange tree still in the store planter. We didn’t go to the store, but the tree’s original owners did, and did so just before they died. So far, it’s working on a single orange, but we’ve been watering it. Zoic has taken to calling it Eric. But I’m digressing. As long as the electricity still comes through the wires free of charge, and keeps the computer on and the water warm, I think we will have little reason to do any actual construction. Not to mention the noise. It might bring on a mob of them. They’re fairly spread out, but they will clump up if you give them reason to. We’ve gotten out of situations like that before, but why make life harder than it has to be.

We’ve also talked about making a tank of some kind. We have an old school hummer parked out in front of the house, but we drove it around for one day and nearly ran out of gas. Getting gas isn’t a huge problem, but it leaves us open to attack. So it sits in front of the house, waiting for its turn to come again. When we start feeling adventurous, we might even head to the military base and see what goodies we can find.

The world ended sometime between December 31st, 2011 and January 2nd, 2012. While the infection, or whatever this is, seemed to start the night of New Year’s, some people still showed up for work on the first, and things probably weren’t apocalyptic until the second. It’s odd seeing undead party-goers, and also store clerks. For a portion of the population, that Saturday night must have been a quiet one, so quiet that they didn’t even realized that things were headed downhill fast.
This is a blog, but for whatever reason, I feel inclined to mention that we probably won’t talk about everything. The painful, the boring, etc. There’s plenty of that. And I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to any of you out there to keep track of every little thing we do. I’ll try to stick to the interesting stuff. You might be crying out, “I want to know more about x!” If I find y more interesting, that’s what you get. And if you want x, you should ask for it. But also, please, give us your address and the most convenient route to get to you. I swear we don’t bite.
There are things we try to do every day, like checking radio signals and other parts of the Internet. There hasn’t been anything but static and a few stray Credence songs on the radio. It’s funny, I still don’t like CCR. Much of the Internet is downright mangled. Social networking is a big one. Any of the good places to try and communicate are gone. Not really sure what happened there.
There’s really no indication that anyone anywhere is alive but us. I hope that changes. I hope there are others.

You can call me Rok. I’m not sure there’s much hope for this not sounding cliche, but I am a survivor. To my knowledge, I am one of two, but I have to think that there are others like us out there, which is the primary motivation for writing this blog. The Internet still works, but if you’re here, then you already know that. Electricity still works, we’ve still got clean water. Somehow I would have thought all of those things would have ceased a month and a half into what I can only call the apocalypse. Yet they persist. Cell phones don’t seem to work, though. Go figure.

We are holed up in Phoenix, Arizona. Just off of Camelback and 32nd Street. It’s not a well known intersection, like those in New York, or LA, or San Fransisco that everyone everywhere is supposed to know because they are somehow significant, but I know it well, and it’s kept us safe. It’s hard to imagine what New York would be like right now given that there are so many people so tightly packed. In Phoenix, the population density is so low that it’s not difficult to drive in between the infected, and to hide without being mobbed.
My companion through all of this is Zoic. I’m sure she’ll chime in shortly. She’s pretty cool, and I think you’ll enjoy her. She was a writer, once, just like me, and we’re both fairly committed to keeping grammar alive post-civilization.
Anyway, if you’re out there, I hope that it helps knowing you’re not alone. And, perhaps, some day we will meet.