Zoic and I are not living far from the Biltmore. This is an extremely wealthy neighborhood, and, taking full advantage of the apocalypse, we have been liberating many of their possessions. Zoic collects jewelry sarcastically.

I want to talk about one house specifically today. It was a large house, complete with fountain and statue. High ceilings, large windows, grand piano, dining hall. We were rummaging through the bedroom. Zoic went for the jewelry boxes, I looked around a bit more. I found a book shelf. Floor to ceiling, fifteen feet wide. They had all the classics, from Gilgamesh on. I walked from the earliest part of history to the more contemporary things. Then I hit metal. Underneath my feet, underneath the carpeting. I was confused at first. Then I tapped my foot a few more times and the same ping came back. By now, Zoic had turned to look at me. I got out my knife and I started cutting carpet.

“What are you doing?” Zoic asked. She was alarmed. Then, a common expression went across her face. It’s the “Oh, right, we’re in the apocalypse, carry on” face. I did.

After about five minutes we had discovered a trap door. Lifting it revealed a dark stair case. We clicked our flashlights on and went urban exploring. It wasn’t musty or humid, like you might expect, but dry and cool. Locating a switch on the wall, we lit up a number of fluourescents over head. The walls were plain cinder blocks, the floor epoxy. In one corner, a large tank of water sat. Clean water. We made a note. On the other side of the room, there were two doors. Doors can be a bit tricky. You never know what might be on the other side.

We flipped a coin. Tails. Left door first. I pulled the door open, and got out of the way. Before I could look, Zoic fired twice from her shotgun. Then twice more. Then once. I turned to look. Three infected. Two adults, one child. They were holed up in this panic room. One of them must have had a bite, and then spread to the other two.

“There must be another way down here,” Zoic said. I nodded.

I quickly moved into the room, pistol at the ready. No one else. Not much else, in fact. A bed, some half eaten food, an old television.

On to the next door. Same method. I pulled the door wide open, Zoic ready to shoot. This time, just a gasp. I turned. We had stumbled upon the largest stockpile of gold I had ever seen in my life. There were gold bricks stacked eight feet high, four feet wide and deep. We took a moment to just stare.

In the back of this room, we found a ladder that lead to another trap door.

It was strange that at this time, I couldn’t help but remember all of the commercials on television. “When the stock market fails, and the U.S. dollar plummets, there will be only one thing that keeps its value. Gold. Buy gold today. Your conservative pundit agrees.”
Suffice it to say, we took the water.

No one really knows what happened to all of these people that made them this way. I have always felt that it was a disease of some kind, the way that it spreads. But there are varying degrees of the effects and not all are affected the same way. Some are fast. Well, some were fast. Not many are now. They burned out a while ago. Some are slow. Some appear to be decomposing rapidly while others seem to… hold it together. Some have a degree of rote memory. Some are more graceful than others. They’re all getting kind of sloppy, now, though. I don’t know why it’s always stuck with me, but I was down town for a short time when this was all beginning, and someone had tagged the side of a tall, old building with neon green spray paint, and a neon purple border. It said only one word. “Zombie.”

   We go searching through houses sometimes because we need things, but usually because we can’t sit still for too long. It’s almost always a good thing, because we get to stockpile useful resources. Unfortunately, we’re still using mostly blunt weapons. Zoic found a revolver, which she has been using, but bullets are limited, and she tries to conserve them. We’d been through two houses earlier with nothing to take but some canned and frozen food. Food is always good, but it doesn’t provide any real killing power for our future plans. We’ve been hoping for a good redneck house filled with tons of guns. We found something like it.

The house wasn’t too far from where we’re living, but it was in a richer neighborhood. There were bodies outside, no longer moving, and there appeared to be gunshot wounds. Yet the windows were broken, and the door was off its hinges. We yelled inside. There’s no rule book for the apocalypse, but it seems reasonable that making yourself known will avoid accidentally hurting or being hurt by humans, and it will bring the infected out of hiding. There was no response. I was hoping really hard that no one was inside and feeling crazy enough to fire on humans. That’s no way to die in the apocalypse.

We took care of the first two by the door. Adults, well dressed. Inside, there wasn’t much activity. It seems that whatever happened had happened a long time ago. There was a crawler (he had his lower limbs removed somehow) and we took care of that, but otherwise we had little trouble. The freezer had some nice veggies and the cupboard had some things to eat. We loaded these items back in the car, but we’re greedy, so we went back.

The bedroom was somehow entirely covered with blood. I’m not sure what happened as there wasn’t a body to speak of. Just blood. A shitton of blood. Under the bed, we found the rifle, loaded with only a few bullets. After ransacking the drawers, we found a box of bullets. Much better. Searching through the closet, we found another handgun with some bullets that Zoic thought she could use in her revolver. She threw the guns back and forth between hands, deciding which felt better in which. The heavier, she kept in her left. I got to use the rifle. I was a bit embarrassed to say that I had never fired a gun before. She said, “neither had I.”

I once had a friend who claimed to have guns hidden everywhere in his house. I told Zoic that I thought there would be more. We searched for an hour in every corner of the house. Finally, in the garage, I looked behind a tool shelf. At first it looked like nothing, but when I pulled it out, it appeared to be an AK-47. I don’t know anything about guns, but it says so on the body. After pulling it out, Zoic and I looked at each other a bit perplexed. It didn’t quite make sense at first. “Arizona,” she said. I nodded in agreement and aimed the gun at the other side of the garage. It felt a bit awkward and new. I’d get used to it, I decided. There didn’t appear to be any more ammunition, but it had a full clip.

We peeked out of the garage and saw that we had some new friends, and we decided to head out before things got any worse. All in all, not a bad find.

“But I love you, Miranda. You can’t go.” James bumped lightly into her, knocking her back several steps.

“There’s nothing left for me here. Not since April fell over in the corner there.” Miranda’s limp body brushed slightly against James.
“Then I will have to come with you,” James persisted. He lifted an arm in protest.
“It’s far too dangerous. What happens when your father finds out where you’ve gone?” Her jaw drooped with an air of emotion.
“Forget about him. I don’t need him or his money any more. And neither will we. Not where we’re going.”
“James, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“You can tell me anything, Miranda.” James placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“There’s someone else. I am running away to meet him now.”
Just then, Timothy entered.
“It is true, James. Miranda is with me now.” He hobbled with purpose.
“No. It can’t be true. Miranda, how could you leave me for my lost evil twin Timothy?”
Miranda just stared blankly. Gripped with emotion, James reached down and took a bite out of Miranda’s shoulder. She let out a scram of agony. Then, she swatted him. James fell to the ground and Miranda squatted beside him.
“Why couldn’t you just let things be the way they are? You could have found someone else,” she moaned, as she began to eat his fallen corpse. Shortly thereafter, Timothy joined in. Then, they started a new life together, putting the past behind them.
We get bored sometimes.

My hair is getting too long for the apocalypse. Part of me wants to just shear it off, but that seems like a waste. It’s not like I don’t have time to take care of it, and the water is still plentiful. Rok bitches about conserving water, but if the water goes out, it’s not going to matter how much we save, and if that happens I want to be as clean as possible.

Old people zombies are really scary. I used to think old people were kind of scary, anyways. Nothing against them, really, but they always gave me the heebie-geebies or something. I used to worry about becoming old, and now I’m proud of myself with every moment I’m not one of them. Today I took out an old lady wearing pink fuzzy slippers with gore all over them. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight… hence this late post. There’s a hierarchy of scary ghouls that roam around phoenix: children zombies are probably the most disconcerting, since naturally you don’t want to take them out, or at least I don’t. Next would probably be the disabled, then old folks, then standard run of the mill monsters. Sympathy is a dangerous luxury here. I try to keep what I can, and hold it hostage under a supply of anger and rage. Certain types of zombies provide ironic satisfaction. Trendy zombies are particularly amusing to me. It’s interesting to see the remnants of a person’s disintegrating identity clinging to their rotting, ambling corpse, bereft of the human condition. I feel like I have been witness to the great equalizer: preppy high school students, suit and tie business men, juicy couture wearing housewives, all gathered together in the same hoard, devouring the flesh of the living.

Valentine’s day was never my favorite holiday. I liked the pink and red hearts everywhere but that was about it. The last time I did something for Valentine’s day, I was twelve, and I had a party at my house. Someone stole the pewter wizard figure off my bedroom shelf.
Anyway I don’t see any reason to drag the tradition out now.

Zoic and I have only been surviving together for a little while, but I thought I might offer to make her dinner, or do something nice. She had absolutely no interest, and shame on me for trying. I’d like to clarify: I might be the last man on Earth.
Something possibly more important is that it is Arizona’s 100th birthday, or it would be if it were still alive. I still think of it as Arizona, but really it’s not much more than the Sonoran desert right now. It came really close, though.

   Zoic and I spent the afternoon clearing away the undead from the house. It takes the pressure off of us during the week because there are fewer of them to hear us and start crowding in. After killing around six of them with a combination of a shovel and a revolver that we found in a house a while back, we collected their bodies into a large pile in the middle of 32nd Street. Asphalt is good for keeping the fires at bay. Before we could burn them, however, we took their wallets and set them aside. Now, you might be asking yourself, why burn the bodies? If you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, there are two main reasons. The first is the smell. They smell bad, and they smell worse while burning, but they smell for less time when burned. The second reason is illness. You might think that the virus, or whatever makes them the way they are, is our only concern, and that fear stops when they die. But this is not the only concern. rotting flesh brings bugs and bacteria and all kinds of nastiness. Fire is the purifier.

Now you might be wondering about the wallets. There are very few sources of entertainment in the apocalypse, and the vast majority of them are related to the infection. This is one of those. Zoic and I like to climb on top of the roof of our house and watch the fire, while we look through these personal items. That way, we can create stories about each individual that has just received the Joan of Arc treatment. Entertaining each other is the best way to prove our usefulness to one another, which in turn keeps us from killing each other in the middle of the night. I kid.

I opened up a wallet. Greggory Schuster. Brown eyes, brown hair, average height, according to his driver’s license. Drove a motorcycle. Had a number of business cards inside. Either he was a lawyer, or he got into trouble a lot. Three hundred dollars in cash. Probably a lawyer, but then again, might not be. Two condoms. Not many people carry two condoms. I never carried any, but the women I was romantically involved with were not so impatient that we couldn’t stop at a drugstore. I removed the condoms from his wallet and showed them to Zoic. I winked at her and smiled really big. She stared back at me, uninterested in this joke. You might be asking yourself, do I do this with every condom we find in a wallet? I do. Every single one. And I was tempted to do it once for each of the condoms I found in this one.

Greggory had a number of credit cards, some with very little wear. He was a member of a gym, and kept pictures of several women in his wallet. If only they could all be this interesting. Zoic and I determined that the beautiful brunette was his Jackie, attractive, yet presentable. The red head was his Marilyn, judging by the clothes in the picture. She had a face with certain feline traits, but the boobs were unbelievable. There was one last picture of a younger woman, maybe 19 or 20 years old. His daughter, perhaps? Then again, maybe we’re giving him too much credit. If he died, as most people did, during the night, then it’s possible they were all prostitutes, and he was going to see one or several of them with his 300 dollars and two condoms. He also had a Costco card.

Greggory Schuster. Lover of prostitutes. Friends called him The Schuster. Died once by infection, then again by the purifying flames of Rok and Zoic. If only we had a mandolin.

I never got  any tattoos but used to like them. I knew someone who did them for a living. He had a huge work in progress piece of a cathedral on his back. He had over ten hours on it, and it was still only half way done when I last saw it. In terms of his own work, he did a lot of good things, but usually stuff like dolphins jumping through hearts of flowers. Even so I  can’t help thinking about how many pieces of his art are rotting away now on the arms and legs of the undead. There must  be some melancholy even to the lonely tramp stamp flapping gently in the wind, clinging to the exposed white of a sacrum bone. I haven’t seen any so far, but I try not to look too hard anyway. It’s depressing. I wonder what that cathedral piece looks Iike now. It’s fitting isn’t it? The image of a half finished monument peeling off the remnants of a half decomposed person.
Sometimes it’s a bad idea to think too much about these things.