The sound of the ocean lulls me into a blissful relaxation. The sun sets on the beach. I’m not sure if the sun will ever dip behind the horizon, and I don’t much care. Its golden light gives everything that beautiful, saturated glow. The water seems blue, even though it isn’t. The sky seems blue, even though it isn’t. The trees sway with the gentle breeze. How can anything be so green? Zoic walks toward me, digging her toes into the sand. She is holding two frosty white glasses of what I can only imagine is liquid heaven. She is naked except for her bikini bottom. Her breasts seem to smile at me as much as her face. The sun, too. It’s smiling. A thud. A woody thud. There is no wood that I can see for miles down the beach. I am sitting in the sand myself. Another thud, louder. This doesn’t make sense. Louder this time.

I woke up. Angry. I switched off the white noise generator that provides me with ocean sounds all night and groggily walked toward the door. Zoic was already there, looking out the distorted glass window. It was Dave. Dave is infected, and mostly dead from what we can tell, but he still seems to return from work at the same time every night. He can’t operate the door knob, which is good news for us, but the knowledge that he can find his way home is frightening. Just how many of the countless infected that we’ve killed still had some memory of who they were before? How many of them still have valuable, although small, parts of their conscious minds left?

“We should really do something,” I said. Zoic merely nodded. There was a pause as we watched Dave sliding his hand down the window and bump his head into the glass once more. “I don’t think I can do it,” I said finally. We had already emptied the home of Grace, Dave’s wife, and their two children, still pictures above the fireplace. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill him as well. Zoic nodded again. “Maybe we’ll get used to it,” I added. “Back to bed.” Zoic sighed and turned to head back to her room.
Without facing me, she said the words, “You’ve got an erection.”

Sometimes it’s hard not to let your imagination run away with you. I’ve always had that problem. It’s different now though. There’s really no reason not to let your imagination go, but there isn’t anything out there to stop it. I never thought that I would go crazy, but now it’s a real possibility  for Rok and myself. I find myself day dreaming a lot about what the world could be now. It’s hard to believe that anything is impossible anymore. Rok enjoys the present, and he’s more worried about the future than I am. The zombies are nasty, but they don’t really know better. I can’t exactly call them evil. I’m hoping that there are no bad guys left. I have a lot of fantasies about what the world could be like now. Like what could happen if we find some more people and start society again. The whole world is open to me now, but it seems further away than it ever was before.

Thought we’d do something special for leap day.
The liquor store was locked from the inside, which was a good sign, I guess. You tend to find fewer living things inside when that happens, but sometimes what you find inside is worse. We broke the glass, and then the lock, and we made our way in. Behind us, a flaming crowd of infected ran around like headless turkeys. It’s the easiest way to clear a group of them when you’re determined, and well, we needed a drink.
It was a classy place, not a convenience store. A place where you could spend three hundred dollars on a bottle. We spent nothing. I picked up some things that I had always wanted to try, some Johnny Walker Blue, an 18-year old single malt, and a few things I had never heard of, but had pretty labels. Zoic likes the sweeter stuff. The stuff that makes you think you’re not drinking. It’s funny, I’ve always liked the stuff that made it impossible to forget that you were drinking.
There was a blood trail on the floor. It looked like someone had been dragged into a back room, which now had the door shut. Best not to think too hard on that one right now. I placed two bottles of the blue label in a canvas shopping bag. That’s right. We care about the environment. I turned to look somewhere else and I caught the blood trail once again.
“I keep looking at it, too,” Zoic said.
“We probably shouldn’t.”
“Maybe it will be horrible, and justify our drinking.”
“Maybe.”
I turned away and started picking things out again. I focused on the clinking of the glass to keep my mind off of the door. Zoic went back to picking our her flavored rum, and Southern Comfort. Then I turned once more.
“We gotta do it now,” she said. I nodded weakly.
Zoic set down her bag and approached the door slowly. She knocked.
“Hello!” She shouted. No response. She turned the knob and pushed it open. I watched from a distance. She pointed her head toward the door, indicating that I should look inside. I’m not sure what look came over my face at that moment, but it was enough to make her burst out in laughter. Offended, I charged toward the door and looked inside. It’s difficult to describe the scene that I found. Inside, the owner of the store was sitting in a chair. A look of horror was frozen on his face. Between his legs, and infected had latched on to his inner thigh and maybe a bit further up. His pants were on, it wasn’t anything sexual. From what I could tell, the corpse bit his thigh (maybe it fell over or something), and he killed it. Perhaps when it died, the teeth didn’t let up, and he couldn’t move. It was pitiable, really.
“Now we’ve got a toast to make,” Zoic said. I nodded.

-Portal Gun
-Green Mushrooms
-Fire Flower
-Portal Turret (No hard feelings)
-Red Potion
-Green Potion
-Blue Potion
-Metroid Gun
-Mini nuke
-Needler
-Pretty much all video game items.

To be continued.

It’s still there. All is well.

We’ve been in one place for a long time. Back at the beginning, things were exciting. The infection was spreading quickly, and there was need of being mobile. Now, things have settled. The infected are slow and easy to avoid. Things are easier. But from our complacency grew fear. There are places we avoid, whether we know through experience that they are full of infection, or whether we merely theorize it. Any building that is large enough and protected from the outside is probably full by now. People filled buildings like that, and they didn’t survive. Numbers are the biggest advantage of the infected, and the biggest weakness of the living. Now, I don’t know much about this first hand, but, if you open a door to a department store and see the sheer numbers of them, you’d come up with a couple theories yourself. And run. I haven’t been back.

The various shopping malls, I’m sure, are full of the persistently locomotive. Also, many super markets and large stores. The public library down town might have provided enough protection, but I doubt it. I’d like to go there, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk. And we really don’t have the fire power. The hardware store would also be helpful, but it’s another spot on the map that we avoid. We would really have to be prepared.

There are lots of places that we do go, though. The nearby supermarket is one. Without that, we’d probably be dead. Any store that only has room for maybe ten or fifteen people is usually worth the risk, provided it has something of value inside. I needed new shoes.

Other than those few places, we try to get what we need from houses. Houses typically only have a few occupants, which makes a lot of difference, and they have a lot of things that we need. The refrigerators have mostly spoiled by now, but cans are always good, and occasionally we find some weaponry to replace what we’ve used. Some houses have a lot of infected crowding around them, which is usually a sign that there are useful things inside, but there’s also a higher chance of some horrifying scene inside. We get over it.

We ate the remainder of our food reserves today, which is probably not as dire as it sounds. So we decided to head down to the supermarket. It’s within walking distance, if we were to walk anywhere any more. We drove. And we pulled up in front, avoiding many of the infected out in front of the building. Keeping up with a super market is a chore. For whatever reason, even if there aren’t any more people inside, there are always more of them there. They eat some of the food inside, which is all rotten by now, but I guess it sustains them. There haven’t been many since the first time we cleared it out, which was a desperate move. At that time, the fast ones were still around, and we needed the food. Zoic and I had barely met up and we were running out of food in the houses nearby. Rather than find more houses, we, foolishly, decided it would be better to hit the store. It was packed. It’s difficult for me to remember what happened exactly because of the fluidity of the moment. We did what was necessary for what felt like five minutes. By the end of it, we’d racked up two thirds of the kills we had, and we weren’t going easy on them before. That was the biggest bonfire ever. I don’t think my body can even produce that much adrenaline now.

Today was not so difficult. They were there, as they usually are, and always surprised to see us. I know they’re not intelligent enough for coherent thought, but I feel like that look always says “Holy shit. You’re still here? I thought we ran out of you months ago!” The surprise doesn’t usually last long.

We took everything off the shelves that we wanted for the next month. We’ve nearly cleaned out their cereal supply, even though there’s no milk. Frozen foods are priority one, as the canned foods will last longer. Zoic brought her cart to my aisle. She had an assortment of things from throughout the store. Some very old beer, frozen vegetables, and some spices. She also had several cans of dog food.

“For Mabel?” I asked. She nodded. “Lead the way.”

I followed Zoic to the deli section of the store. The smell in that area is… difficult to describe. She opened the cans of dog food and placed them in a large bowl. She took a deep breath and looked at me.
“I’ve got your back.” She nodded again and opened the door quickly. She slid the bowl inside, as Mabel, the decomposing corpse of the sweet deli lady, charged her. She stepped in the bowl and fell, and Zoic closed the door.

After the fight that took out the entire population of the store the first time, Zoic and I found Mabel standing behind the deli counter, as if nothing had changed. She was infected, and not moving, but she wasn’t posing a threat. Zoic had a vague memory of visiting the store when Mabel was a human, and didn’t want to kill her. I wouldn’t say she’s a pet, but the symptoms are there.

Having done our duty for the month, we finished loading up our carts with as much as we could safely store at home. When we came out, they thought they were going to mob us, but they’ve grown soft. And we were expecting them. There weren’t many. Just a few. And then there were none. We loaded the car and drove home.

Zoic and I have been searching neighborhoods nearby looking for solar panels. As I’ve already said, I don’t know much about the electricity situation, and it’s possible that things could get very dark soon. Not just dark. Hot. It’s currently pretty cool outside, but scrambling to assemble panels in 110 degree heat doesn’t seem like a good idea. We’re starting early. Many of the tools we have are electric, and we can’t lose them. Also, we’re trying to fashion some sort of vehicle that might run unconditionally. The  benefit of the solar panel is obvious. We live in Arizona. I learned a little bit about electricity in my past life, and I found a couple of books that should get us going.

Today, we turned down a street I must have driven a thousand times before. It was the next zone on our list. So far, we had been lucky. Only a few infected, and most of them too slow and heat stricken to give chase. Then we spotted one. It looked like an old model, might only be good for heating water, but still worth the effort. The coast was clear, so we got out. We’re always careful. While most of the infected are slow, they can surprise you.

We unloaded the ladder from the Suburban we commandeered, and we set it up in front of the house. Zoic usually watches as I climb. It doesn’t make much sense to have both of us up the ladder. That’s how you get cornered.

I brought a tool kit, and quickly went to work detaching the panel. It came loose and Zoic helped me get it down. We loaded it in the back of the vehicle. Zoic wanted  to check out the home. Today, I waited outside. It’s usually a good idea to keep an eye on the exit. There’s really no way to maximize any operation with just two people, but this seems to work.

Then I saw her. An exgirlfriend. Not recent. High school. Still someone I cared a great deal about at some point. And here she was, hobbling toward me. The level of decomposition was not severe, and she was still pretty. She was missing her left foot, and the eyes I had once stared into for hours now contained no sign of humanity. They were dead and hungry.

“I’m sorry that this happened to you.”

She continued toward me, only about 15 yards away.

“I know things didn’t end well between us, but I never would have wished this on you.”

She just kept stumping along.

“I always wished the best for you. I hoped that you were happy.”

More stumping.

“I know you liked to sing. I’d hoped you’d kept up with that.”

She groaned. Not the sweet music I remember.

“Who are you talking to?” Zoic asked. Then she saw Kelly. “Oh.”

Zoic walked the remaining twenty feet and smashed Kelly in the head with a shovel. She fell. Then Zoic smashed her head once more with the shovel on the pavement, finishing the job. I was speechless.

“What’s wrong?” Zoic asked me as she returned. I walked back to the car and got inside.

We all handle the familiar infected differently.

– I miss seeing people who were uglier than me.
– I miss watching the Goldline commercials on Fox News (they were so wrong, but so right).
– Hipsters.
– Black Friday.
– Tests at School.
– Tumblr
– New webcomics
– Other people
– Telemarketers (or maybe just phone calls in general)
– Advertisements (I don’t always miss advertisements, but when I do, I make my own)
– That stupid look on the face of my neighbor’s dog.
– Losing online video games to children in foreign countries.
– Debating with crazy people
– Cat videos on youtube (they’re still there, but how many times can you watch them?)

To be continued.