Just Another Apocalypse Diary: Day 1 (Short Story Series)

When you finish this story and want to continue the Zombieness, check out Paul E. Bailey’s   story!

The world is shit and zombies. I kick myself time and time again for not following my aunt Winnie’s advice to prepare for the end of the world. I mean, who would have thought she wasn’t a total whack job. Too bad all her preparing was for nothing. In the end, if you didn’t get the golden ticket of immunity, you became a walking meat puppet.

Zombies don’t care about food or fancy cars, so it turns out there was no need to stockpile. What I would love to have more of, is training to add to my skillset. They’re not teaching self-defense for ladies at the community center anymore, it’s all learned in real life situations now. If you fail, you die. Obviously.

Right now for instance, I need to know how to escape an oak tree that is totally encircled by plaguers. I don’t really like calling them undead or the classic title of zombie. I prefer plaguers, it’s a more scientifically correct label. The disease is a morphed version of the black plague that emerged out of England about six months ago. It spread quickly because of the highly contagious one month period before any serious symptoms presented. One well designed disease was all it took to bring the world to its knees.

“Ughgh” The plaguers say in frustration as they repeatedly try to climb and fall off a low branch. I’m relatively safe in the tree, just as long as I didn’t need to eat, drink, or get comfortable. Right now, I’m crossing my fingers and toes that my long awaited knight in shining armor will arrive. He would need to have some badass armor to battle the plaguers and not be torn to shreds though.

The first few layers of their skin turned to gooey mush when the sickness took them. Muscle and connective tissue stays intact for some odd reason. So now their gums are gone but the teeth shine long and gruesome. At the tips of their fingers and toes there is usually no skin, just a sharp tipped bone. The better to shred you with, my dear. Not to mention their complexions look like the worst case of pizza face you’ve ever seen. Well there was a boy in tenth grade that came close but he cleared up by graduation.

Anyway…yeah, stuck in a tree with a family of ants. I guess I could eat them but eww and I think I remember reading something about not eating if you have no water. It’s been ten hours so far, I’m not desperate yet. It’s getting dark so I think I’ll jam my self between some branches and try to get some sleep. The plaguer’s moans are my new white noise machine.

——————-

I made a run for it and I’m out of the tree! Thank goodness, my butt was completely numb and I could barely hobble away. Now I’m holed up in an abandoned house that I happened to find. It’s only about a mile from my tree.

So now to fill you in on how I got free. I awoke this morning with my leg in an awful cramp and about three hundred yards away, across a field, a man was screaming for help. Not all that uncommon in this day and age unfortunately. He did have an unusually high voice for a man, “Help me, somebody!!” he screeched on a loop. He caught sight of me in the tree and sprinted in my direction. I shook my head emphatically and pointed to the South where I hoped would be a clear path. Miming that there were plaguers below.

Any direction was better for him to go other than toward the horde under my tree. The man hadn’t spotted them yet but they were all gung-ho headed his way, due to his insane screaming. I don’t know how he could have possibly survived until that moment without knowing that sound draws plaguers like flies to shit.

I myself, haven’t spoken more than ten words in months. It’s why I write in this notebook. For fucking sanity. Maybe that’s why he was running around wailing, he had gone bonkers. It was the most probable theory; not that it actually mattered why.

By the time the man saw my predicament and veered away, it was too late. Every single one of my admirers turned and walk/shuffled his way. I guess a screaming man on the ground was better than boring, silent old me in the tree. He was surrounded and torn to pieces quickly. The gurgled screams only went on for another minute. Some people hung on for a horrifyingly long time while they were eaten alive. Not the way I wished to go, that’s for sure.

I took off in the opposite direction of the carnage. Thankfully, I found this house empty of plaguers and with it a solar well that still pumped lovely clear water. I boiled it anyway. The only type of the runs I want is the ones where I’m running. There’s a nasty thought, running with the runs. Yuck! That would be a mess. Of course, if that ever happened, I’m one hundred percent certain that the last available hot guy on this planet would show up. Yes, that is my luck. It allows for life against the odds, but not dignity.

To add icing to my great luck today, I found a pantry full of canned food. Including, drum roll please………marshmallows! I’m not able to have a camp fire to roast them but I love those pillowy treats stale too. Hell, I love them all ways.

It was really too bad that guy was such a nutter and got himself killed. I haven’t seen anybody else in weeks. On my way out here to the west coast, or what used to be California, I spied on some douches running a safety camp. They were using interstate eighty as their own personal toll booth. Those survivors stupid enough to roll up in a vehicle were stripped of their belongings and put to work on the group’s flimsy ass wall. The “safety” they provide is all a sham anyhow. Plaguers don’t tend to walk uphill unless given incentive. If you were to give them a good reason, they would bust through that place like a party piñata. Needless to say, I went around their crap operation.

In the beginning of civilization’s downfall it wasn’t easy. I was afraid of being all alone, sitting in my aunt’s cabin deep in Nevada’s rural high country. Until the night my home got ransacked by a neighbor. I was asleep in my makeshift treehouse high above the cabin when it happened. I quickly realized he wasn’t looking for food, he was trying to find me. Not a situation I ever wanted to get in. I moved on.

Hiking around, I was able to find some great places way out in the boonies. Low sightings of plaguers and high yields of food per home. Once the hysteria died down and people figured out how to survive, finding empty “off the grid” homes wasn’t easy anymore. Groups of people hunted for them and created security walls when they could. I knew that I could never hold onto one alone, so I tended to just drift. Making my way from Nevada was not fun and was a shit ton of walking, but the snow was coming. Even before the apocalypse with central heating, I despised winter. I knew if I didn’t want to be cold, or starved I had to go west.

The mail on the kitchen counter says I’m in Carmel Valley, California. I can smell the ocean in the fog and can’t wait to see the waves smacking the sand. Fresh fish would be bliss right now.

I’m heating water for a bath, and writing while I wait. You know I think the worst part of the apocalypse, apart from the plague, is the lack of indoor plumbing. Clean water was just there before, you didn’t think about it. Turn on the faucet and let all that good fresh water run down the drain until it goes warm. Now, it’s a damn hour of hauling and water boiling for a shallow bath.

My water is finished heating and I’m done writing for the day. I’ll talk more later my friend. If I don’t die, that is.

 More to come….

A great blogging writer, Paul E. Bailey has asked to write a sister story to my ApocalypseDiary. It’s written in a different style and in a different place but these stories share time and Zombie population. Please give this awesome story a read and continue to follow the characters adventures! Thank you.😊