January 31st

This is Jimmy Varn and I, unlike Mr. Corbin, I am still alive.

The skies opened up and rain is just pouring. I took the empty barrel that Chuck had and put it outside. I figure I could collect rain water and purify it. The faucets are still running but I want to use them as little as possible.

I went looting this morning and found another survivor. Well, I found his poisoned and reanimated corpse. He was wondering around his attic and I could hear him as soon as I walked into the house. I found the attic stair and blew him away with two pistol shots.

His footprints showed that he just walked in circles up there for God knows how long.

His name was Victor Corbin and I know this because I found his diary. He had been up there for two weeks before deciding to overdose on sleeping pills and whiskey. I figure he blew himself away the same day after I started blogging. Damn dude, you could have held it together a little longer, you know?

Victor had some interesting entries. He mentions hearing something from the Speaker of the House on his radio. He writes a little about how New York City was quarantined. Ha, Snake Pliskeen better watch out.

Mostly though, Victor writes about how he was alone and afraid. He doesn’t have any weapons and all he hears for the first week are gunshots. He writes about his son in Texas that he can’t reach. Victor wrote a lot about how little food he has.

He also wrote about his dog that he had to kill with a shovel. Damn, I had been wondering about pets and apparently Victor’s dog, Smoke, got bitten by something and then died. Smoke came back to life while Victor was digging a grave. Lucky for Victor, he had a shovel to brain the dog. Unluckily for Victor, it looks like his dog dying a second time was too much for him.

The next two entries is him being depressed. He apologizes about a store he used to steal from when he was a kid. He apologizes for cheating on his taxes. He apologizes for not wanting to live.

All of his stuff was in his attic. It looked like he felt safer here. There is a blanket, two cans of food and some water in a jug that looks way too dirty to mess with. Lord knows where it came from.

But there was one thing Victor had in abundance and I took it all. The man had porn. It was fetish magazines of legs and stockings but it had women and they were partially naked. Best of all, they were women, which is all I cared about. I found a garbage bag and double bagged them so they wouldn’t get wet on my wheel barrel.

After the rain had stopped, I went back to bury Victor. Shit, I hadn’t buried the Girl Screamer but I didn’t know her. The grave isn’t finished yet, not by a long shot, but it seems like the right thing to do. I’ll finish it after lunch.

January 30th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

Something crazy happened today. This morning I saw something I didn’t even think was possible. I want to report it in case any scientists are reading this blog. It seems important.

There were two gangs of zombies and they came from opposite directions on the street. They all looked young, like maybe teenagers. One group was Asian, and the other was Black. I hadn’t noticed zombies traveling in racially coordinated groups before, which would have been weird in itself.

I was in the upstairs window with a rifle. I was thinking about taking some target practice to stay sharp. I had one zombie lined up and I was ready to go when he started hauling his dead ass. Most zombies barely move faster than a stumble, but this one was tottering wildly as it tried to move as fast as possible. I stopped looking through the scope and watched them.

The zombie gangs rushed each other. It took like a minute to reach each other but it was lightning fast for zombies. The moans were different. It was more hostile somehow. They came at each other and well, tried to eat each other.

It was fucked up. Zombies were biting chunks out of each other for all the good it would do. Some tried to punch each other but their movements were so still that punching was useless. It was pathetic. I started laughing to be honest. It just seemed so ridiculous.

They fought for like half an hour. I stopped laughing as I watched them. You know, I have no idea why we even have zombies. I don’t know if it is a virus, or some kind of infection or Sweet baby Jesus, it really is the Rapture. All I know is that they eat the living and most of them seem to be quite retarded and stuck in some sort of mental rut. Looking at these zombies though, I have to wonder how much of their old personalities must still be in them.

Christ, imagine being a racist fuck for the rest of your undead eternity?

The Asian gang won. It was a gruesome thing to watch. The zombies didn’t seem to understand they were fighting other zombies. They would try to bite each other but it wasn’t till they did enough structural damage that one would go down.

It could have gone either way. The reason the Asians won is because they scored the first real kill, and then the zombie who won went to help out a buddy. The other gang did the same thing. As one zombie would defeat their enemy, they would go join a friend. That was fucking scary to watch. I couldn’t help imagine what it would be like to have to face these assholes. Teamwork is something I did not want zombies doing.

I finished off the winners. I am sure science might have wanted to study these guys but I sprayed their gang oriented brains across the road. I pumped some rounds into some of the dead zombies too. You can’t be too careful.

After they were all still, I went to check them out. I haven’t really looted the dead before but I was curious. They all had knives, which thank God none of them knew how to use them. One of them had a fucking pistol and I took that too. That is one small favor I guess. Zombies that shoot would be fucking wrong.

I’m staying inside for the rest of the day. I can sort my food and maybe take a sponge bath. There is plenty to do inside Home Base without going outside where zombies roam in gangs. Fuck.

Signing off.

January 29th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive. I am also much more careful.

I carry three pistols and the ax now. I can’t figure out how to unjam the one pistol and quite frankly, I am a little afraid to try. I have left it alone for now.

I also do a visual sweep every single time I step outside. If I see one mother fucking zombie, I get the rifle and take it out before I go on my looting raids. I am taking no chances.

Little Joe stopped climbing the tree and now sits under the tree. He freaks me out but maybe I can learn something from him. He is the only zombie I have really ever watched.

Sweet Baby Jesus, I am turning into Will smith.

I am running into other looted houses now. I think the Screamers must have been breaking into houses too. What I can’t figure out is why we didn’t see each other. Shit, we are lucky we didn’t try to kill each other but I see they don’t have guns. Maybe they knew I was here but avoided me.

The more I think about that, the more hurt I get.

It is annoying to find already looted houses but then again the Screamers did all the hard work for me. When I looted their place, it took four trips. They had all sorts of stuff that I hadn’t thought to take. I wonder if it is because they had a woman in their group.

Let’s see, they had gathered towels by the dozens. They had a lot more cooking utensils and the hot plate. I found all kinds of soaps, mostly liquid hand soaps which I guess are easier to use without water. They had a ton of candles and a shitload of different medications.

I hadn’t really thought about medicine. They found all sorts of antibiotics and I guess it was in case they got sick. It is a good idea and I am embarrassed that it hadn’t occurred to me.

One thing I saw was that they were drinking water from their faucets. It is fucking tempting for me to do the same thing but no thanks. The bleach water scares me a little but not as much as whatever microbes might be in water system.

They also had looted something that I had the worse time finding: sweets. They had four Hershey bars which I am hoarding away. They had two big bags of peppermint canes that I have been chomping on all day. It is so nice to have something sweet in my mouth again.

The best part? They had two bags of Chocolate Chip cookies? Score!

Another large group of zombies came through. Only about eight of them this time but I stayed inside. They walked down the street almost in a line. I was tempted to take them out since they were lined up so nicely but I saved my ammo. Now that I have so much food, I am getting conscious of my other supplies, like bullets.

Today is my last day of Apocalypse Tacos. I am going to log off and enjoy it.

January 28th

This is Jimmy Varn and mother-fuckers, I am still alive.

A damn gang of zombies nearly got me. I don’t know if they were the tail end of the zombie parade but there were ten of them shuffling down the street. I had found a wheelbarrow that looked like it had never been used in someone’s yard. I was carting a ton of shit out of someone’s front yard when I saw them.

They weren’t twenty feet away from me.

I screamed a little. I wasn’t expecting them. Other than Little Joe, the kid zombie who is always tree-climbing, I wasn’t expecting anything. In my mind I was enjoying a break from the parade ordeal.

I only had one pistol because like I said, I had gotten lax. I pulled it out, held it in both hands, and started shooting.

My aim was shitty. Worse, the shooting really got the zombies excited. They were all men, which I thought was weird but then again, I am hyper sensitive to noticing women these days. The more I shot, the faster they came. The faster they came, the more nervous I got and my aim got worse.

I should have ran for Home Base. I see that now but at the moment I was stupid. The wheelbarrow was there and it was too heavy to move fast. I had been looting the Screamers’ house and I found an honest to goodness Hot Plate which I was dying to try.

Ha, dying.

So I kept shooting and my gun jammed. It fucking jammed, just like in the movies. I didn’t know what to do with it. There were still five left at this point and one of them was right on me.

I swung my pistol at it and cracked its head. It stumbled and I backed off. The ax was sitting on top of the wheelbarrow and I snatched it up. I had decided to carry it with me as my backup weapon even though it didn’t do its last owner any good. This was a fact I that I was well aware of during this fight.

I was Conan the fucking barbarian. Well, except I was aiming lower. I learned the lesson that Dead Screamer didn’t get a chance to and that is skulls like to hold on to things but legs just give out. I kneecapped three of them real easy.

The last two however got too close while I cutting down the third zombie. I was dancing away from the crawling zombie when I realized the last two had me surrounded. They were too close for a good swing.

All I could was push at them. Zombies have surprisingly good balance. I think it comes from their lack of speed. I pushed and they mostly just leaned back while trying to grab me with their hands. Complicating matters was that the one I had just crippled had grabbed my leg and was trying t pull itself to bite me.

It is times like these that I know I really want to live. I pushed, shoved and kicked in a wild frenzy. There was nothing graceful about my moves. Terror fueled my strength and damn, I get pretty strong when I freak out. One zombie fell over and I couldn’t swing the ax but I could drop it on the arm of the one who had me by the leg. From there it was easier to get away from the last standing zombie.

My problem was that I was out of running room. The other zombies I had crippled were crawling towards me. I fucking wished I had brought two guns.

I heard someone saying promises. They promised that if they ever got out of this, they would always carry two guns. They promised they would pay more fucking attention. They promised to be careful. It took me awhile to realize it was me. It had been that long since I really spoke out loud.

I survived of course. It was slow going but I separated everyone from their heads. I won. My arms were killing me from swinging that ax but I lived.

Now I have to keep that promise to be more careful.

January 27th

I am Jimmy Varn and I think I am still alive.

I finished Laymon’s ‘Island’ yesterday. It was a bit disturbing. I burned through two candles last night finishing it.

It is really funny. As a bookseller, I hate spoilers. I would have customers come in and tell me how books end like it was their privilege to tell me. I hated it. Hate, hate, hate spoilers.

So here it is at the end of the world and I want to talk about this book that fucked with my head but I won’t. I don’t know if anyone is even alive to read this but I can’t break my rule about spoilers.

But I have to talk about it.

Okay, Rupert is this nice kid. A Bad Guy kidnaps some women and rapes them. Rupert beats the Bad Guy and save the women, but in the end it looks like Rupert decides that he is owed a reward of sorts. He takes advantage of the situation and maintains the situation the women are in, but in a more humane manner.

Fuck, I felt dirty even giving away that much. Anyway, the thing that bothered me is that Rupert was a good kid. He was a good kid who realizes he can do whatever he wants and he does it.

And I was jealous of him. I am alone in Home Base and I am scared and I have to say, three or four hot women to fuck would be pretty nice. Am I willing to go out and get some? Of course not.

But I think about it. I think about how it is the end of the world. I think about what I would do just to have a woman around. It is not even about the sex. It would be awesome just to have some company.

Would I be willing to keep her here against her will? No, of course not.

I think.

I am not sure.

I was pretty repulsed by the rape scenes in ‘Island’ but at the same time it was better than thinking about the zombie parade. Does that make me a bad person because it was entertainment to me? Fuck I don’t know. I am so lonely right now, I would almost welcome any situation, no matter how fucked up, just to be around another person.

I went to the house where I heard the screaming. I had been putting it off. It is too close of a reminder of what can happen to me.

The house was barricaded but the front door was pushed in. I don’t know how that happens unless it was just the sheer mass of the zombies. Judging by the nails in the wall, they had the thing pretty well boarded up but it was still knocked in.

I stepped over a lot of dead zombies. Their heads were caved in. I found the ax that did it. The ax was embedded in a zombie’s head. I am guessing they lost the ax and things went to shit. Well, shittier than having a hundred zombies in your house.

The woman was upstairs in the bathroom. She tried to hide in the tub. I can tell she was the victim because her skeleton was there and not much else. She had long blonde hair that was prettier than I expected. I wonder how she kept it clean. Her torso, arms and legs were missing anything chewable. They even ate her ass.

The tub was coated in blood, but I could see the tongue prints of some of the zombies as they tried to lick it off the wall.

I threw up and then sat outside the bathroom for awhile. I wondered about her. Was she here with her boyfriend? Her husband? A brother? Where was he? Did they chew on him till they noticed her? Is he up walking around?

Could I have saved her?

I felt this tremendous loss. It was weird. She was probably here with her boyfriend but I felt like someone had just broken up with me. It reminded me of high school when you have a crush on a girl and she starts dating someone else. I felt like I had missed my chance to know her and be her friend.

I didn’t have any such feelings of loss for her missing male screaming friend. I am aware of this and it is not helping my self-esteem right now.

I am going to log off now before I come across any creepier.

January 26th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am worn out but still alive.

The generator wouldn’t start. It finally ran out of gas. You know, I wasn’t concerned about losing power because the fireplace works pretty well but I was terrified of losing my blog. This thing keeps me sane. It seems like only spammers leave comments but I can pretend someone is reading this.

Anyway, I needed gasoline. There were a few cars parked on the street and I stole gas from them. In novels, they always make siphoning gas sound real easy. Fuck that. It is not easy at all.

For one thing, I had to find a hose thin enough to go into the tanks. Lucky for me, the plastic gas jugs that Chuck stocked up on come with little hoses and air pumps for siphons. It is crazy what you can buy these days. Or at least what you could buy.

I went to the car that I shot the windows out of and opened the gas tank. I discovered that something was blocking the hose. I could hear it so I used a flashlight and saw that there was some sort of screen blocking the hose from the gas. It is pretty smart safety feature that I didn’t even know cars hard. The damn screen was metal too so I had to get use a slender crowbar I found the day before. I reached in and pried the screen up while I slip the hose in.

That is a metal crowbar that I am banging a metal screen right above a gas tank. One spark and my ass would be grass. The things I do just to blog.

I have to say it was pretty damn exciting. I felt like Mel Gibson. Maybe I will start sewing spikes into shoulder pads.

I siphoned out about five gallons and I was happy for it. There were three other cars parked on my street. I guess most people around here died away from their home. I got four gallons out of a Civic and a measly two gallons out of Matrix. I swear people, keep your gas tanks full in case Hell Day breaks out again.

I am making hitting a gas pump one of my top priorities. I need to stockpile gas.

That kid zombie noticed me. He was still trying to climb the tree. He couldn’t be more than ten. He had a G.I. Joe shirt with Snake-Eyes on the front of it. It was the kind of shirt I would have worn at his age. He didn’t come for me. I was pretty glad. I didn’t want to shoot him.

Getting to more important matters, I decided to do something creative with the hamburger meat. I was tired of food that comes out of a can. I wanted to make something. I had found some tortilla wraps and although I am not sure if they can even go bad I decided to use them. I fried the hamburger on the fireplace and I mixed in anything I could find. Beans, spices and one purple looking bulb of garlic. I mixed it and fried it and put most of it into a plastic sandwich container. I wish I had some cheese, lettuce or sour cream but oh well.

I call it the Apocalypse Taco and it was awesome. Garlicy but awesome.

I found some ice trays and I am thinking about trying to freeze some water outside and seeing if I can make enough ice to fill up a chest. That way if I find any more meat locked in freezers, I might be able to make it last.

Scrounging for gas kept me too busy to check out the screamer’s house. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m starting to feel a little hopeful again

January 25th

Jimmy Varn reporting in and I am still alive. So is the generator which is a fucking miracle.

The zombie parade moved through sometimes after dark. The rain however is still going. Sweet Baby Jesus with his holy rattle, was I happy to see the parade finally come to an end. The mass if still heading God knows where but at least I can leave my house now.

Now the parade did leave me a few guests. There were about sixteen zombies wondering the streets this morning. A few weeks ago that would have seemed like a terrifying number. Today? Not so much. I picked a rifle and went upstairs to work.

My stomach was growling and my aim was shaky but I was happy to be shooting again. I was happy to be doing something rather than hiding. I was actively changing my environment. I was popping heads and killing those undead fucks.

There was a child zombie that I didn’t shoot. It was a little black boy. He was trying to climb a tree and being a zombie, he couldn’t climb for shit. He kept trying though. I know I should shoot him but damn, I am just now at the point where I can shoot women zombies. He’s small; I know I can outrun him. I’ll get him tomorrow.

It took about an hour but I cleared out the street. I then went outside with my two pistols, my big military looking knife and my backpack. I hauled some serious ass. My stomach was growling and I had basement fever.

I was methodical this time. I went down the street and checked it for zombies and then checked it for supplies. I came across the house with the security sticker and saw that the windows were smashed in. No fucking alarm after all.

Inside the house I found a bag of Doritos that was unopened. Oh my fucking God. I stood there with my back to the wall and ate half the bag. It was salty, cheesy, slightly spicy goodness. My fingers were orange and I didn’t care.

The house was filled with all sorts of goodies. I found a wooden bat upstairs but I don’t think it was to play baseball. I also found an automatic with a box of ammo. Whoever lived here was terrified of a break-in. Their fear was my gain.

Food wise it wasn’t so great. It is funny how critical I am of people who don’t cook at home. I found some cans of soup and some wine. I don’t even drink all that much but I might start. To make up for the lack of food, they had a crap load of candles. Most of them were scented but after so long in the dark, I was glad to have another light source.

A nice side effect of the parade is that they trampled every bush in the neighborhood. They even knocked over a few of the smaller trees. There were so many broken branches and twigs I was able to get a real fire going in the fireplace.

I searched eight houses this morning. I ran into one zombie who was lying down on a bed like they were trying to sleep. I shot it in the head and it felt fucking good. Only took one shot too, but granted, it was on its back. Still, it was my first pistol shot at a zombie and I killed it. Too bad it made such a mess of the comforter it was on. It looked pretty damn comfy.

I was on a home making expedition today. I grabbed canned food, chips and thank Baby Jesus for the 27 total cans of Coca Cola I found but I was also looking for stuff for Home Base. I grabbed blankets, candles and toilet paper.

Yeah, toilet paper. I am not drinking the water untreated but the toilets flush. I have been trying to conserve how many times I flush and it is not pretty. Still, toilet paper goes a long way to making it better.

I didn’t explore as much as I wanted but I am cleaning those places out. I have a ton of new clothes to wear when these get stinky. I have a nice pile of canned foods again. I even found two pounds of frozen hamburger which I keep debating what to do with. A hamburger would be divine but maybe I could stretch it into a little bit of beef for a whole week.

Best of all, I found four gallons of bottled water that I can drink and use for more purifying. Go me!

I haven’t gone looking for the people that were killed during the parade. I have an idea of where they may be, but they were outside of my loot pattern today. Maybe tomorrow.

My lunch of lean cuisine chicken marsala is ready. I am going to light the fireplace and enjoy a warm day. See you tomorrow.

January 24th

Jimmy Varn here and I am still alive.

So are the rain clouds too. The clouds opened up today and just stormed solid for an hour. It was so loud I turned the generator on and warmed up an extra brick. I also warmed an extra can of peas. Two hot meals in one day!

God I am pathetic.

The zombie parade is starting to thin. That is good news at least. Instead of shoulder to shoulder standing room only it is more like a half hearted mob. I can see the road sometimes. There are still too fucking many of them. Instead of a thousand on the street there are only a hundred at any time. More than enough to kill me but man, at least it is starting to thin.

Even with it raining, I can see how much damage they have done to the neighborhood. It is weird, they move mostly right to left down the street but I can see where they decided to invade some of the houses. One house has an entire wall knocked down like a hurricane hit it. I am trying to figure out why I didn’t hear it collapse. I knew the moans were loud but fuck.

They have stomped anything in the yards. Mailboxes are down, trash cans are knocked over and there isn’t a single fence still upright. I saw a lot more broken windows. I guess my paranoia about hiding in the basement wasn’t a bad idea. I have no idea what set them off, but something encourages zombies to break into houses.

You know, it is times like this I really get pissed at Hollywood. There is always some smart scientist explaining everything to audience. Nobody is explaining shit to me now! I wonder if Will smith and Jeff Bloom are hiding in Hollywood, working on a zombie in their homemade laboratories.

Fuck, I don’t understand zombies at all. I just know to leave them the fuck alone. I know to stay away from windows and I know to don’t fucking get their attention. I also know some of them watch television even when the television is not on and some of them try to drive cars that don’t belong to them. Other than that, I don’t know shit.

So no, I am not working on a cure in case you were wondering.

At least the rain is killing that stench of dead people. It is also slowing them down a bit as they stop to look up at the rain. Dumb ass fuckers. I am a little worried that if enough of them stop moving that the parade might break apart and I will have a hundred zombies camping on my front lawn. That would suck and not in a good way.

Hey look, I cracked a sex joke. I am almost human again.

I am down to one precious can of soup. I have been saving it for lunch today. It will be my one meal of the day and I plan to enjoy it. I have to say, if there is one thing about a zombie apocalypse that has been good for me is that I really fucking enjoy food now. I used to eat while reading or watching tv but now when I eat, I don’t do any thing else. I eat and that is it. And I am the most grateful person on the planet when I eat my one can of pinto beans.

The other bad thing about rain is that it is too dark to read. Things are getting perverted in ‘Island’ and I want to know what happens next. I feel like me and Rupert is in the same horrible situation, except he has more hot chicks around him.

Oh well, thank goodness for the DS. I guess I will be playing more Puzzle Quest till the sun returns.

The generator sounds bad. I might be going dark soon. If that is the case, I just want people to know I am still here. Please come get me.

January 23rd

This is Jimmy Varn and my cold ass is still alive.

The zombie parade continues. Fuck. I am half tempted to load up on guns and go out there. I want to be like Rambo, doing my best to take out as many as I can. I can pretend I am doing my part for the future of humanity.

I would love to have a flamethrower. One last suicidal charge like a good Team Fortress Pryo.

Instead I stay here. I’ve taken up reading. It passes the daylight. Right now I am reading Richard Laymon’s ‘Island’ which is a fucking good read. It is first person and tells the story if a college kid who goes on the worse vacation ever with his girlfriend’s family. Murder and crazy shit is happening on every page. Also a whole lot of talking about sex.

Shit, remember sex? Remember when a woman’s breast held magical power and wasn’t just an empty sack of cold flesh hanging from a corpse? God, I have seen so many decomposed women walking around I didn’t think I would ever get wood again. Laymon’s writing gave me wood. I am actually grateful for it. I feel more human.

The best thing about the book is that it takes place on a tropical island that is hot, humid and nothing like a basement. Just reading about a sunburn warms me up. You know, the murdering and killing isn’t bothering me as much as I thought it would. It is something different when it is another person doing the killing. It’s personal. These zombies, they don’t give a fuck. They will kill you just as eagerly as they would kill a Boy Scout or the Taliban.

They just kill, and it makes it damn frustrating to think about loosing your life to something so fucking stupid and relentless. It is like being killed by wood rot or mold.

I wanted to talk about something else. I realized that if I had been more thorough with searching the houses around Home Base, I might have found those other survivors. Now I am not saying that if I were with them that they would still be alive, but who knows? Maybe they would have had more supplies for me? Maybe they knew something that could be really fucking useful about now.

The thing is, I went on a long distance scouting mission when I have what, a dozen houses on this street alone? If I was playing a videogame I would have never NOT explore my nearby surroundings before I went on a field trip. It is stupid and it was because I was hoping to hit it big with one trip to a store. No, I should exhaust the resources here. Hell, someone on this block might have a space heater which would be really awesome right now.

So this is my promise. If Sweet baby Jesus with his diaper full of poo can make these fucking zombies go away, I promise to loot the houses near me in a systematic manner. I am transferring the entire wealth of the neighborhood to Home Base. It will take a lot of work and it will mean spending more time outside than in, but I do not want to starve to death on bleached water.

January 22nd

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

The bleached water tasted awful but I read that if you change the water between several containers, it will help with the taste. I think it has to do with getting air into the water. It sounds crazy but it worked. A couple of jug swaps and it tasted fine.

I drunk half a gallon right away. I only have the one gallon jug, so I emptied it into water bottles and filled it up again. I have a regular water processing plant going here.

The mother fucking god damn cock sucking asshole zombie parade is still going. I guess I am used to them because yesterday I went to the upstairs window and set up the blinds so I can look at them without them seeing me. I guess I was just curious. I wanted to see what their demographics were.

You know how in those Romero movies, they would show a zombie dressed as a clown, or maybe one dressed as a cheerleader? I always thought that was funny shit. I wanted to see if there was anyone like that in the crowd. Call me crazy but I was hoping for a laugh.

What I saw didn’t make me laugh. I saw a large group of people wearing hospital scrubs. That tells a story all by itself, doesn’t it? I saw a senior citizen zombie still using his walker. I saw four different Santas, and not once did it make me laugh.

I saw way too many children.

It was too depressing to watch. They were people. I will say one thing though, zombies don’t discriminate. White, Black, Asian and Indian, they are all one ugly shade of rotting gray now. Atlanta has always been a pretty diverse place but we have racial equality now. We are all just meat.

Another thing, I am freezing. I can’t believe I used to go without heat when I first moved to Home Base. It has been five or six days since I had fire and I am feeling it. I am shivering non stop and let me tell you, shivering is exhausting.

Since I am firing up the generator for the computer, I am using the toaster oven too. I cook my lunch and then leave the toaster on. I got smart yesterday and took a brick and put it in the toaster over. I put that brick in my sleeping bag and I had warmth for a good six hours.

Shit, I have gotten smarter now that I am desperate.

My food is getting scarce. I ate the last of the canned fruit today. I have four cans of vegetables and one precious can of chicken noodle soup I had been saving for after I knew the water purification was working. I think I will eat it last.

I still have caffeine headaches and would almost brave the zombie parade if I saw a walking corpse with a six pack.

If this zombie parade goes on for another couple of days, I am fucked. Not that living is such a joy. I am freezing. I am scared. I am too afraid to move sometimes.

I think about those people I heard screaming. How long had they been holed up and I never knew it? How good did they think they had it until the parade noticed them? That is what I can’t help. Every time I start to relax and get bored with the zombie parade, I think about a thousand zombies breaking in and smothering me as they rip me apart.

It keeps me in the basement. I feel like I have been buried alive.

January 21st

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive, unlike those poor bastards down the street.

When I first heard the screams last night, I thought I was imagining them. It has been so long since I have heard someone else’s voice that I almost didn’t recognize it. When a second voice joined the screams, I knew it was real.

The screams were coming from down the street. I went upstairs and tried to find a window to look for them, but it was so damn dark. I could barely see anything but I could hear them. I could hear them shouting for help.

Fuck. I saw the zombie parade falter a bit. Most of them kept walking forward but some of them turned around. It was like watching an undercurrent as it slipped back towards the screams. Zombies might not react to every sound, but they are sure as fuck reacted to this.

I thought about helping. Crazy, right? There were literally thousands of zombies and I was trying to think of a way to help. I wanted to help those screamers. I wanted to rescue them like I had been praying for someone to rescue me. Sweet Baby Jesus, I wanted to do something other than hide in Home Base.

There were screams but no gunshots. I think there were two different voices. One was male and the other was female. They shouted at each other. I couldn’t make out the words but I could hear the terror. They were trying something and I was hoping it would work.

I heard the female scream even louder than she had before. Her next scream was so sad. It was so pitiful, that I started to cry.

A few minutes later, I heard her shout but then she was cut off.

I stayed in the upstairs room and waited but I didn’t hear anything else. I cried. I cried for at least an hour. I was so upset. They sounded close but it is so hard to tell with echoes in a dead city. I could have found them and maybe helped them.

I could have died with them.

That was last night. Today I am still alive and thirsty as hell. I decided to try the bleach idea.

I had an empty gallon jug that I filled up with water from the faucet. The water looked ok but you can never tell. I then took some bleach, unscented by the way, and I put two drops in. I am supposed to let it sit for an hour or so. I think I will let it sit for eight to be honest.

Also, the generator went out and I had to use the gas from that garage I found. I am not sure how much power that leaves me but my worse fear is two days at most.

The zombie parade keeps going. I took a peek and it looks just as strong as ever. Fuck, it is like the whole world died and are marching outside my door. If the bleach kills me, at least I will have company.

Signing off.

January 20th

I am Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

The zombie parade keeps going. At least I slept last night. I think I am actually getting used to the sound.

The smell is a whole other thing. Sweet baby Jesus, they smell awful. I tried to eat pears for breakfast and all I could taste was death. It might actually make my supplies last longer if I don’t eat.

I am down to two bottles of water. I am fucked.

Which is why I have to say what I need to say. I wanted to talk about how we fortified the store and moved bookshelves. I wanted to discuss how Ken organized us into shifts, customers and employees alike and set up a watch. I want to talk about how Paul, Doris and the big wrestler guy died and came to life. I could talk about how we had to kill them. I could fill a page with how Gwen died when we tried to get to a car, but you know what? That is all unimportant.

What I want to talk about is when we started to run out of food. We had a little coffee shop so we had some good supplies. Ken said that we needed more food. He suggested that some of us go out and get some food from the restaurant across the street. He said that if just four of us went, we could bring back enough to feed all of us for a month.

It sounded good. Ken said he would lead the group and he wanted the three college kids to help him because they were in the best shape.

Their names were Jenna, Walt and oh god, I can’t remember your name, dude. I am so sorry.

I was a little surprised when he picked them. In the few days since Hell Day, things had gotten really tense. Ken kept giving orders and we all obeyed him because he was the boss, you know? We were used to doing what he said. Even during the apocalypse, it seemed like Ken knew what to do. We were glad for someone to have an idea of what to do.

But those kids, they kept asking questions. They argued about the water rationing. They insisted on setting something on the roof to attract a rescue. Ken would give an order and those kids wanted to discuss if it was actually a good idea.

Ha, you can tell those guys had never held a job.

So when Ken recommended that the kids come along, I think the college fucks were happy to. They saw it as a way of being on the scene to help make decisions. While the rest of us were afraid to leave the store, the college kids were eager to do something. I remember Walt worked out silent hand signals before they left.

Poor bastards.

So Ken and the kids go out. They run out the back door and we watched from the windows as they make their way to the restaurant. We watched them all go in. Each one of us back at the store was just thanking God that it wasn’t us out there.

They started to bring out boxes of food. We cheered from inside the bookstore. They were stacking it on the street and my stomach started to growl. I almost went out to help but fuck that shit. The last time we left the store, Gwen got eaten by at least seven zombies. None of us were going out there till Ken told us to.

Ken came out while everyone else was back in the store. Then he did something really weird. He had some keys and he locked the door. Then he ran back to us. He told us to come out and grab the food. Like an army we poured out and started grabbing food.

I was the only one to question him. I demanded to know what that was all about. Where was Walt, Jenna and the other dude?

“They were necessary cutbacks,” ken said. “They weren’t team players. There were too many people in the bookstore and we don’t have supplies for everyone.”

I was stunned. Apparently, there were zombies in the main dining area and Ken told the kids to look into the kitchen. Ken had located the keys at the restaurant while the kids were looking for food. He had them loot the kitchen and bring the food out. As they were getting ready to leave, Ken encouraged them to check the freezer out again. While they did that, Ken banged a loud kettle till he had all of the zombies’ attention and then ran out. He figured that with the zombies riled up, they would find the kids.

“Problem solved,” he said. He actually smiled.

I was pissed. I called him an asshole and a bastard. I turned to my coworkers. I asked them what do we do about Ken’s murderous ass?

They thought he did the right thing. They were just glad that they had made the cut. God damn. Vicki, who wouldn’t fucking eat meat because it hurt animals, said that the kids were going to get us all in trouble if they stuck around.

Fuckers. Ken told me that as his assistant manager I needed to toughen up and be ready to make the hard choices.

I should have gone out there and tried to help those kids. I mean, Ken wouldn’t have stopped me. I thought about Jenna and how she read those mysteries. I thought about Walter who had the biggest crush on her and she was oblivious. I thought about dude who I can’t remember. He was so damn quiet.

I could have helped. Just one guy with a lead pipe who wasn’t panicking could have been a big help.

Oh God, I hope those kids aren’t in the parade.

I was too scared. I was too damn scared. I was terrified just like I am right now with the zombie parade out there. I stormed off and sat by myself in the world history section. People left me alone. Fuck, they were probably planning to make me the next necessary cutback.

They closed the blinds and went to work on the food. I didn’t have any. I couldn’t believe how easy it was for my coworkers. Food was much more important than the betrayal.

That night I packed my shit and left.

January 19th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am technically still alive.

The parade keeps going. The sounds of feet shambling and throats moaning is driving me nuts. It is like a perpetual death chorus.

I wanted to talk about something. I want to talk about the bookstore I work at and what Ken did. I want there to be a record.

When Hell Day happened, we found out about it slowly. It was before Christmas and the store was slammed. We had some old lades who were gift wrapping books for some charity. We had college kids who were enjoying their break. We had way too many toddlers because their parents used the bookstore as a babysitter.

The morning crowd was insane but around lunch time, it was thinning out and I thought it was weird. Usually it gets thicker, not smaller. I blamed the recession.

There was a complaint that someone was asleep in the ladies’ restroom. The customer said it stunk bad and the person inside the stall didn’t respond to knocks at the door. We assumed it was a homeless person. They crash here sometimes.

So we sent Doris in. Doris was a big giant of a lady who didn’t take shit from no one. She was black and fearsome, and that was just to her coworkers. I asked her to check it out.

Doris came screaming out of the restroom. She was grabbing her shoulder and it was bleeding bad. She screamed that she was dying and that the person inside had tried to kill her.

She was pretty hysterical. The shoppers responded like frightened sheep and most of them left in a hurry. Ken was pissed and was shouting at Doris to shut up. You know, I think all of those people leaving were a good thing.

Well the person who bit Doris came out. I don’t think I will ever forget my first zombie. She was an older holiday shopper. She had short blonde hair that was frosted almost white. She had a big coat and a red scarf that wrapped around her neck like a snake. Expensive leather gloves covered her hands.

Her mouth was bloody and her eyes were bulging. She looked at us and she moaned.

I think I can here her now outside in that parade.

So here we were with a zombie and Ken trying to shut Doris up. We didn’t know it was a zombie. You could tell she was dead just by looking at her but the brain doesn’t accept that shit, you know? We stood there and looked at it.

Paul went up to it and tried to talk to it. The zombie spun around and lunged at him. It bit his fucking nose as we watched.

I ran forward. Frank and Gwen were already on the zombie, pulling it off. Oh God I miss Gwen. Anyway, they were pulling the zombie off Paul but they weren’t trying to kill it. You don’t kill customers, right?

I joined in and so did this one customer. He was a big guy and he put his arm around the zombie’s head like he was a damn wrestler. He slapped a head lock across its face and was shouting abuse at the zombie.

So the zombie bit him.

You know, if you are reading this, you know all about zombies. I don’t need to gross you our or anything but I have to say this. When I saw that zombie just bite the shit out of his arm and then SWALLOW, I lost my shit. I have seen it happen a lot more times but that first time? Fuck. I threw up.

A lot of us did. Not Gwen though. God bless Gwen’s dead ass because that woman knew what to do. She picked up a heavy ass picture book of canyons and swung at the zombie’s head. Gwen didn’t swing with the flat side like a paddle, she swing with the edge. She hit the zombie’s skull and buried it right in her head.

The zombie went down. Paul is crying with his missing nose and big wrestler guy is crying with his arm. I think I was the first one to think to take out my cell phone and call 911.

No fucking reception of course. The cell towers were already jammed. I tried using the store phone and 911 was busy, which is the last thing you ever want to hear.

I give Ken some credit. He got us organized. He had the doors locked. He tried to get the last few customers to leave but three of them stayed and he didn’t mind. They were scared college kids. I bet they thought this place was safer than their dorms. Poor bastards.

We had a bleeding customer and a dead zombie. I think Ken wanted some non-store witnesses. Ken, always thinking ahead.

We could look outside and see something wasn’t right. The street outside was jammed with traffic. Some of the cars looked abandoned. Hell Day was happening fast and if it wasn’t for the restroom zombie, we might have missed it.

As night fell, we realized we were heavily fucked.

I’m going now. I can’t stop thinking about Gwen.

January 18th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

The zombie parade is still going on. My God, it has been over twenty-four hours. They move slow but how many fucking zombies is that?

Yesterday one of them knocked on the door. It scared the shit out of me. Knock, knock, knocking for a good five minutes. I was too afraid to peek out the peephole. You know how when you are outside, you can see the light coming through the peephole and it gets dark and you know someone is there? I did NOT want to do that now.

The knocking stopped after an hour. The zombies kept walking though.

I am too scared to make noises. I am too scared to do anything. I barely slept. I brought the sleeping bag downstairs and holed up next to the outside door. I thought about barricading it but what if I need to run out that way? Fuck.

I keep three pistols by me.

Last night I put one to my head, just to see if my hand would be steady enough not to shake.

It shook.

The zombies keep walking. Where are they going? Where did they come from?

I can just imagine a small group of survivors holed up in a store and they think they are pretty safe. Then they see a whole shitload of zombies coming and they start shooting. Then the zombie parade comes for them and it is just like in the movies. The survivors shoot ten and a hundred take their place.

Fuck. When I was a kid, my mom would take me to the beach. She taught me to build sand castles up high from the water. The first time I did that, I was bored. My tough old castle just sat there.

The next time I went, I built a sand castle well within the tide line. I would build the biggest and baddest castle possible just so I could see how well it lasted against the water. The waves would come in and piece by piece take my castle out. I was fascinated as I tried to imagine what part would fall first. I loved doing that. The tide always won but it was neat to see how the tide won.

I feel like people are the sand castles now. I feel like it is just a matter of time before they take me down. I feel like the tide of zombies are walking by Home Base but all it would take is a roadblock of some kind and they tear me down.

I also ran out of Coke today. My head is killing me. I need caffeine.

If anyone is alive, please leave a comment. I need to know I am not alone. Please.

January 17th

This is Jimmy Varn and I may not be alive for much longer.

Holy shit. I can barely think for all the footsteps. Here in the basement, everything thunders from the streets. I swear they are walking right above me inside the house.

Shit, here is what happened. I went out. I had my three pistols and I was ready to go all Kurt Russel on someone’s ass if they got in my way. I got down two blocks and started to feel very optimistic. I got very hopeful for about ten seconds.

That is when I saw the crowd. No, it was more like a god damn parade. It was thousands of zombies. I fucking mean it when I say thousands of zombies.

God damn.

I ran. They were heading straight up my street. Some of them saw me and as a large crowd they all moved. I could easily out run them but fuck, you do not want to be chased by more things than you can count.

I got to Home Base and moved everything in front of the door. I grabbed my shit and went into the basement. I waited and prayed that they weren’t all going to follow me here.

They followed all right. Lucky for me, I think they were just coming this way. Like one giant herd, they are walking through my street.

I waited an hour, then two and then three hours. They kept coming. I mean, how fucking many zombies are there? Is it all of them? Did every damn zombie in Atlanta get together and decide to follow a leader?

There are so many, they are spilling out of the street and into the lawns. They are pushing each other up against the houses. I can hear them stomping across my porch.

I waited six hours and they keep coming. I was too terrified to move for fear of giving myself away. I sure as fuck am not starting the fireplace. I turned the generator on because it is in the basement and I am hoping they won’t hear it. Fuck, even if they do hear it, I want you readers to know what is happening.

The zombies are like a flock. I don’t think they are intelligently going in one direction. I think they are just following the rest of the zombies. I bet they pick up stragglers as they go and keep getting bigger.

Shit, I don’t know why they do it. I am not Will Smith in fucking ‘I am Legend’. I’m a fucking bookseller who is trying to stay alive and reporting what he is seeing. I am trying to let you people know that when you see a crowd headed your way, run the fuck away. I have been watching them for hours and they don’t stop. There might be a million of them.

Oh fuck. Turning power off.

January 16th

This is Jimmy Varn and my stinky ass is still alive.

Now that I am obsessing about my water, I notice how much I really stink. I have been wearing different clothes but even I can smell myself now. My head itches and my balls feel sticky. Today I am actually boiling water just so I can give myself a sponge bath. I can almost hear the generator groan as my precious power goes into making water bubble.

I practiced with the hand guns today. Instead of kicking my shoulder they are now punching my wrists. I never knew how much pain it took just to fire a weapon. The worse part was when an automatic actually pinch some skin between my thumb and forefinger when the top half of the barrel slide back. I nearly dropped it when it took my skin.

Fuck that hurt.

My aim is terrible with pistols. I couldn’t hit anything from my window. I thought about how shitty the pistol is for the Engineer in Team Fortress and I wonder if it is just the range. I guess I will just use it if I get cornered again.

I am packing three pistols and plenty of ammo. I thought about carrying a rifle but I doubt I will be able to carry my shooting table and comfy chair with me to hold it steady. I am taking a nice ass military knife that I found because it looks like it could fuck something up. I am carrying my backpack as well as the thickest coat I can find. I am also wearing a sweater and two pairs of socks. If anything bites me, it is going to take a while to get to the fleshy bits.

The reason I am thinking over my equipment is because I plan to go out tomorrow and see if I can hit a store or something. I want to hit a quicky mart, or a restaurant or god help me, a grocery story. I would abandon my water hunt if I could find a dozen boxes of Coke 12 packs. Nah, I would still get the water.

Today I am laying off the shooting just to give my hands a rest. I am also cooking my last cut of steak over the fire. I want to be full of protein for tomorrow. I want to be pumped and psyched.

I want to be so sated on steak so that I don’t realize how fucking scary this is.

This will be the first time I leave sight of Home Base in weeks. When I was holed up in the bookstore, we watched Hell Day through the big windows. We heard about it from friends and family on our cell phones till the lines went down. We saw the masses of zombies just attacking people in the parking lots. There are a lot of damn dead people out there.

I have to wonder about Chuck and Annie. They never came back. They went out on a little expedition and Chuck was a gun nut. What the Hell happened to them? Was it just carelessness? Chuck didn’t strike me as a brain trust. Or was there just too many fucking zombies?

Fuck. I do not like thinking about this. Chuck was a racist asshole who was hoarding barbecue charcoal but he was a tough guy. I feel a little presumptuous to think I can do better than him.

Shit, I can’t let me talk myself out of this. I got to get more water. My food isn’t looking that great either. I got two more pieces of fish and that is it for the meat. I will be down to canned goods and I know that ain’t healthy.

Tomorrow, I’ll go tomorrow.

I’ll leave in the morning, right at dawn. I want as much daylight as possible. My goal is to head down the street opposite from the direction that I originally came from. It will be new to me but hopefully it will have more stores than I saw coming in.

If I don’t blog tomorrow, you’ll know they got me.

January 15th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

The generator gave out and I had to put more gas in. I think I am getting roughly six hours for four gallons of gas. It is hard to say. I also can’t ignore the fact that a computer might take up a shitload of power.

My shoulder hurts like you would not believe but damn, shooting is kind of fun. I am starting to wish I wasn’t so hard on rednecks. There is something manly about pulling a trigger and watching something explode at a distance.

Unfortunately for me, that something is rarely a zombie head. My kill list so far has been three zombies, a garbage can, three flower pots, a couple of trees and the road about a hundred times. I could get discouraged but the important thing is that I am shooting something.

I made another discovery. I am down to four bottles of water and I realize I need to get off the pot and figure out my water filtering. Most of the internet is down but I kept hitting refresh a thousand times this afternoon and I finally reached a water filtering site that talks about using charcoal. Yay for me!

Unfortunately for dumbass Chuck who stole the stuff, the charcoal used for water filtering is a special charcoal called aerated charcoal. You can find it at any aquarium. Ha, do we have a fucking aquarium nearby?

The process involves taking a barrel and making alternating layers of sand and charcoal to filter out big impurities. Then you take the remainder and boil it to clean it of biological shit. Well hell, boiling water take a hell of a long time and a lot of heat. This is good to know but it doesn’t seem particularly viable for the long term.

Apparently I can use bleach if I can find the unscented kind. It looks tricky though. I get worried with anything that requires two ‘drops’ per so and so water. Drops? Is that a real unit of measurement?

One thing I saw were pills that you can drop in water and it purifies it for you. I can allegedly get these at camping stories, which are not exactly in high demand around here. Shit.

Other methods seem less likely. Ozone? Really? How the fuck do I make that? The other option was iodine crystals but it involves straining the slush of deadly poison. Sigh.

I need to have water. Bottled water is too heavy to drag back to Home Base but when I see it, I go for it. The faucet is still working but it scares me shitless. I don’t want to die of some stomach virus and come back to live in a fully stocked house lurking some other dumb survivor.

Sheesh, I wonder how many water poisoned zombies are already walking around.

Either way, once I decide on a method, I will need to get supplies. That means leaving Home Base. That means going outside for the first time since I got jumped by that zombie crowd. That means going out with a damn gun.

Today I practice with the pistols.

January 14th

This is Jimmy Varn and mother fuckers, I am still alive.

I gave myself a crash course in guns yesterday. The internet is unsurprisingly unhelpful with gun safety. Any website related to guns is out as I imagine anyone still alive is slamming those sites. I had to figure out guns by myself, the way cavemen had to learn.

I started with a rifle. I felt safer with something that has a barrel that ends a good distance away from me. I expected it to be complicated but it was pretty straight forward. The safety was just a lever. When it is unsafe, a little panel says ‘Fire’. When it is safe, the panel is blank. Okay now. That wasn’t hard.

Loading was easy too. I hate to say it, but playing all of those first person shooter games really helped. I had seen reloading so many times that I almost had muscle memory for it. Click, eject, slam a new clip back in.

I picked an upstairs window for my shooting area. It looks out into the street. I knocked the screen window out so nothing would impede me. It was fucking cold to open a window but oh well. I needed the practice. I put the blinds down as low as I could so I would have some camouflage. I don’t know if the zombies can tell where they are being shot at but at this point I wouldn’t put anything past these fuckers.

So there I was, sitting in my chair and looking out the window for something to shoot at. The rifle was heavy but it was a good kind of heavy. It was the kind of heavy that could fuck something up.

There were two zombies outside. One was a thin looking man while the other was a short squat woman. They both looked equally horrible. The woman’s clothes were that filthy gray that matched her decaying skin. The man had long hair that blew in the wind like a witch’s dress. The woman would be an easier target but I aimed for the guy. I couldn’t shoot a woman. I know I will have to at some point, but not to start.

The gun had a scope. I peered in it and expected it to be like the sniper rifle in Team Fortress. Ha, my ass. For one thing, the damn gun moves. Games always have this dead center and stable crosshair. Looking down the scope was giving me seasickness because of how much it was moving. I had a new appreciation for the kind of sniper that can hold a gun perfectly still.

Thirty minutes later, I had cleared a desk and moved it to the window. I set some stuff up and managed to prop the rifle on a steady surface. Now I could actually sight a target.

Took another five minutes to work up the nerve to pull the trigger.

BLAM! It was fucking loud and my head was right by it. The sound scared the shit out of me. I swear I heard it echo down the street. I froze and waited for the stampede of zombie feet.

Nothing happened. Of course, I missed the zombie too. He was looking into a car on the side of the road. Something in there fascinated him and he pressed his face against the windshield. It was a perfect shot.

I missed. I took aim and missed again. Fuck, I shot through the windshields twice, shot two trees and fucked up a lawn gnome pretty seriously but I was missing the shit out of the zombie. That was the safest zombie in all of Atlanta. I went through a whole clip trying to hit him.

It took a while, but I did hit the zombie. My first hit struck him in the chest and my ass cheered when it happened. It took two more shots before I was able to hit him again and this time I nailed him in his shoulder. I felt like a damn assassin.

Then the weirdest thing happened. The glass on the driver’s side door was shattered. He reached in, and opened the door from the inside, and then he got inside and sat. I looked at him with my scope and I swear he mimed putting the keys in.

I was able to hit his head on my third clip. His skull exploded. I have to say it was pretty glorious. Three clips and one head shot is nothing to brag about but then again, how many real life headshots do you have?

I didn’t aim for the second zombie. My arm was sore as fuck. The rifle punches me in the shoulder with each shot. It was like it was trying to remind me that guns hurt and are not toys.

I feel pretty good about the whole thing. I shot close to three clips without losing a hand. I am partially deaf but there is one hell of a dead car and a headless zombie to show for it. I’m almost badass.

I am going to eat this lunch of pan fried salmon and go back to target practice.

January 13th

Jimmy Varn here and I am still alive. You have no idea how lucky I am to be here.

So yesterday I went scouting and wood gathering. I found a shrub that would have been perfect but damn, wood puts up a fight, you know? I broke off a bunch of branches but it took forever. I just felt too vulnerable out there in the street. Zombies don’t make much noise. It doesn’t take anything to get busy with something and stop paying attention to some slow ass fuck coming up behind you.

I decided I had to have an ax. I went into the house across the street. It was empty and I didn’t even check it for food. I was tearing through the garage and the back yard hoping to find an ax. I figured I could hit seven or eight houses really quick.

God, I was so cocky twelve hours ago.

It was the second house that nearly got me. It had a shed and I got real excited. It had a rake, a hose and lawnmower but no ax. I took the hose and I tracked down the gasoline for the lawnmower. I was pretty happy to get something I wasn’t even really looking for. They had some work gloves and I took them too. I set the hose and the gas out by the street so I could pick up after I checked the house.

I go into the living room and there were no zombies. I checked the downstairs and it was all clear. I went upstairs hoping to find some books. Worse comes to worse, I could burn the books if they sucked.

I checked the first bedroom and it was a teenager’s room. Even better, he was a reading teenager. I was so grateful that it wasn’t a girl. I was terrified of only having vampire fiction to choose from.

Well this little bastard’s parents must have no idea of what he reads because it was the good horror stuff. He had Richard Laymon, Clive Barker and David Wellington. These are the good nasty writers who don’t hold back. I would not want to meet this kid in a dark alley, but I was snatching his books now.

I hadn’t checked out the other bedrooms and that is how they got me. One of them bumped up against the door and I jumped in terror. The one at the door was a big guy, really large and bloated. Half his face was gone and I could see his skull. He pretty much took the whole doorway.

I could see there were some behind him, I but I couldn’t tell how many.

It was just me and my lead pipe. I had guns waiting at Home Base but dumb ass me, I left them behind because I was afraid of them. Now I was going to die in some kid’s bedroom.

I gripped the lead pipe and swung. I hit him in the knee and the big thing dropped to the ground. Immediately I saw my problem: he was blocking my only way out. Rage got into me and I swung for his head. I shattered his skull with a fury of fear and terror.

The next one was a woman. She had pretty black hair like Morticia Adams. There was nothing sexy about her out stretched hands and sharp fingernails. She was damn quick and she grabbed my shoulder.

It was just like the damn movies. She opened her mouth and tried to bite me. Her mouth was unnaturally open and she was lunging like I was the most delicious thing in the world. If she was alive, it would have been like one of my wet dreams.

There was no room to swing the pipe. I slapped it against her head but it just sort of bounced. I could hear crunching sounds so I knew it was hurting her but it was too slow. Morticia Zombie was biting my shoulder and I had no idea how long my jacket could hold out.

She had two more zombies behind her. They were adult men and they were both pushing against her, trying to climb over her to get to me. Fat Zombie was slouched in the doorway and I was partially propping him up with my leg. He was my only fucking barrier.

I had no doubt I was going to die. I knew how it went in movies. Once they outnumber you, the zombies win. Once you make a dumb-ass move like forgetting to clear the upstairs, you lose. The worse thing about dying was this terrible feeling that I deserved it.

It kind of pissed me off. I got mad for making a mistake and I just screamed. I pushed my lead pipe against the chest of the zombie. I pushed and pushed and yelled my anger. She grabbed the lead pipe while she kept chewing. My jacket gave out. She ripped out a big patch on my jacket and fell backwards, still holding onto my lead pipe. The other zombies fell back too.

I had a few seconds to do something. I knew better than to climb over Fat Zombie and try to scramble through them. I was also really pissed.

It is going to sound like I am a cool bastard but that wasn’t the case at all. I was just desperate as fuck.

I saw a printer and picked it up. I swung it overhead like I was the Hulk and brought it down on Morticia Zombie.

CRUNCH! It crushed her head.

Zombie Guy#1 was up and trying to come through. I grabbed a floor lamp that was nearly as tall as me. I tore off the shade and thrust it at him. The light bulb shattered on his face. Zombies might be dead but fuck up their eyes and it messes them up. I jabbed again with the lamp and this time I went into the eye socket and beyond. Zombie Guy#1 became dead weight and fell to the ground with my lamp weapon still lodged in him.

Zombie Guy#2 decided to take a try. He was a bit weird. He was just wearing his underwear. A dead nearly naked guy is worse somehow. The worse thing is that he had an erection. Jesus.

I was shaking. I was just so pumped up. I stepped back and searched the room as fast as I could. I picked up an entirely inappropriately sexual statue of Wonder Woman and swung it at Zombie Guy#2. The super expensive statue shattered on the zombie’s head but barely slowed him down.

I picked up a bank and threw it at him. I completely missed. I yanked up a desk door and found a gothy looking letter opener. Like a crazy person, I picked it up and decided to fight with it.

Zombie Guy#2 lunged at me. I lunged at him. I wish I could break it down to a play-by-play but it was crazy. We wrestled. He was trying to bite me and I was stabbing his head. Even when I got the knife into his socket, it took me forever to drive in deep enough. We must have wrestled for at least ten minutes.

Him and his zombie boner.

So I won obviously. I got up and left. I took my bag and that was it. I didn’t even get the lead pipe from under Morticia Zombie. I came straight back home. After an hour of shaking, I went back for the gasoline and the hose.

I have to learn to use the guns. I nearly died with a stupid lead pipe. I have to be more focused. I have to get tougher.

January 12th

Jimmy Varn reporting in and I am still alive.

The great fire burning continues. I have just about exhausted all of the recycling bins around Home Base. I used to bitch about all the junk mail you get in Atlanta but now I wish there was more to be had. I think after today I might actually have to use real wood.

I check the TV and radio everyday. I hate to use the generator power but I have to know in case the military or FEMA sweeps in. I haven’t been reporting it because I thought it would be too damn depressing. Well today the one radio station that had been playing on a loop went quiet. Now that is damn depressing. I never did find out if a real person was there. I guess I never will now.

The lack of music is really starting to get to me. I was actually looking forward to hearing Beyonce. Sweet Jesus, I need to find an ipod. Any ipod. I would listen to country music, gospel or even Britney Spears at this point.

I should totally rob a music store. Then the RIAA will find the last living music pirate on Earth and arrest me.

Fuck, I am cracking up. Yesterday I was playing Monopoly and the little dog was on his last ten bucks. I felt bad for the little dog. He just had a bad streak of luck. It wasn’t his fault. I pretended that the thimble forgave his debt to Pennsylvania Avenue. I talked it out between them. The Top Hat was all pissy about it.

I think I need to stop playing boardgames.

It is just so hard to go outside. In here by the fire, I can just pretend that I am killing time. I can play games and cook food and pretend things are not so fucked up. As soon as I go outside I have to deal with the fact that everything is fucked up. I have to accept that things are trying to kill me in every house. I have to accept that everyone I ever knew is most likely dead and wanting to eat me.

Fuck that is depressing. It is just easier to stay inside. Damn fireplace, you got me spoiled. I love the heat too much to let it die. Fuck I want to stay inside but you keep sending me out.

I’ll try to procrastinate after lunch. Today’s meal is tilapia and cream corn. I am not sure they go together but hell, it’s better than lima beans.

January 11th

Jimmy Varn reporting from the cadaverous city of Atlanta and I am still alive.

I am in a great mood because the fireplace works. I mean, all fireplaces work but this one didn’t choke me with smoke. It got damn cold by the middle of the afternoon yesterday and I got desperate. I started small with some furniture catalogs and got a fire going. It felt so good to have some heat that wasn’t coming off a toaster oven.

I should get some wood to put in the fireplace but where the hell am I going to get that? Do I start chopping down trees? And with what exactly, a butcher knife? I need a good old fashioned ax. What kind of zombie apocalypse am I having if I don’t have a blood-stained ax already?

What I did find is that a lot of people recycle. The amount of junk mail alone is astronomical. I raided my neighbor’s bins and got a bunch of paper. It burns fast but it will do for now. I am tempted to start looking for furniture I can break down and burn. Heck, I might start pulling up bushes and anything else I can find.

I got fire, mother-fuckers, and now I am hooked on it.

I started the fire last night thinking that the darkness would obscure the smoke. I brought the sleeping back down to the living room and slept in front of the fire. It was dead by the time I woke up in and the morning. Originally I wasn’t going to start the fire till dark again but fuck that. It was cold this morning. I restarted the fire and had a wonderful morning of having hot toes.

I held a pot over the fire and warmed up some green beans for breakfast. It was just green beans but it was a hot meal that didn’t need the generator and its mystery power level. It was green beans that I made. I felt like a god damn frontiersman. It was awesome.

I’ve also been waiting for zombies. So far none of the dumb fucktards seem to notice it. If they did show up, I might put up with a zombie siege just to have regular heat.

Heck, I’ve been waiting for live people too. The smoke should be a signal. I got fire people, come say hello and maybe rescue my ass.

This could be the last day I am blogging. I am really fucking excited.

I have been pretty fortunate so far. I have heat, I have food, and I have a place to sleep. I even have guns but I am too afraid to use them.

I have water for now but I need some sort of filter. I keep eyeing the faucet water but hell that could kill me for all I know. I started filling up some of the empty water bottles in case I do come up with a filter.

I wish there were more books. Three houses and all I find are fucking autobiographies. Why can’t I find a survival nut loaded with how-to books? Maybe it is because I am in Midtown. I might need to go to Cobb County. Ha, that would be a hell of a trip.

I am also down to eight cans of coca-cola which is killing me but man, do I enjoy that one can a day when I do have it. I miss sweetness. I want a candy bar, or a cookie or even butterscotch candy.

Today’s meal is mahi in a frying pan over the fire. I took a metal shelf that was being used in the bathroom and I made a little grill over the fire. I used more of my butter and some black pepper. I am having lima beans with it, which are not my favorite in the world but I am trying to cycle through the canned food. Armageddon would be only having lima beans to eat.

Okay, after lunch I am going to go scout some more and look for wood and hopefully an ax. I’m feeling good. I feel like I can survive just fine until this stupid zombie shit is over.

January 10th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive. I am fucking cold but I am still alive. No, I didn’t try out the fireplace. I’m thinking about it though. It is fucking hard to type with gloves on.

Yesterday I got bored and went on a quick scavenging trip. I went to the house on the other side of Home Base. I was about to kick in the door when I saw that it had a Security Alarm Sticker on the door.

Now that is a damn good question. Does the alarm still work if the power is out? Will the last surviving policeman come out to check on an attempted burglary? Most importantly, will the alarm make a shrieking sound that attracts every zombie for a two mile radius?

I know I have said that zombies don’t give a shit for noises, but I really would hate to be wrong this time. I kept thinking about the game Left4Dead, and how when you shoot a car with a car alarm, it summons a huge fuckload of zombies. I don’t want it to be like that, especially when I should know better.

So I skipped the house altogether. Guard-Dog Security should be thrilled. “Guard-Dog Security is so good, looters will skip your house when the world has ended!”

The next house over had no security and even better, an unlocked door. Go me! I was prepared to do a full search of the house when something in the living room stopped me in my tracks. There were three people, hanging from nooses they secured to the ceiling beam. Two women and one guy. They looked older like in their fifties. What was really odd was all their Christmas decorations gave the place a real festive vibe. Fucking weird. It was like finding a mass grave at Hallmarks.

Let me say something right here. These people made a choice and it looks like they did it right. Maybe they debated about it and maybe they cried and had a long talk about it, but these ladies and one guy took a look at the world and said “Fuck it.” I admire that. I almost wish I come to the same conclusion. They controlled the way they went out.

So I am thinking these deep thoughts as I got closer and their eyes opened. Their bodies were still but their jaws started snapping. God damn. Three slobbering heads were trying their best to bit me from their noosed positions.

I threw up. I vomited the delicious roast chicken I had made earlier. It is not that I was throwing up because the zombies were gross. Shit, they looked like people who would come to the bookstore to buy books for their grandkids. They were totally non-threatening. It was just the thought of being suspended like that still trying to eat people. It just made me sick.

I left the living room and searched the rest of the house. It was clear. I could hear the zombies chomping down on nothing. I was tempted to finish them off but fuck, I didn’t want anything to do with them.

The kitchen was filled with stuff I didn’t know what to do with. There were all sorts of grain cereals and a surplus of spoiled vegetables. There were different pastas that I had never heard of. I had no idea what to make of the spices they had.

The freezer was the mother load again. They had fish. They had a dozen different fishes from Whole foods. Oh sweet Baby Jesus, they had salmon, mahi mahi and swordfish. I was never a big fish eater but when you realize this might be the last swordfish you will ever eat? Then it is a cause to celebrate.

There was two cans of caffeine free Diet Coke. Caffeine free? Mother-fuckers! I took the cans anyway. I might drink them just for the taste.

The best thing I found though was a George Foreman grill, which is not a grill and more of a heating press. I was so damn happy to have another cooking option.

So that was it. It was getting dark and I wanted to bail. The zombies never stopped chattering. Their necks must have been broken for their bodies not to move but damn, how does their heads stay alive?

By the way, today’s meal is swordfish fried on the grill. I melted some butter and mixed in some salt and parsley. It felt almost decadent to put butter on the health conscious Foreman grill.

January 9th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still kicking. The steak was awesome. It just felt great to have meat in my mouth. I’m telling you now, if you are low on food, make sure you have plenty of spices. Garlic powder helps everything.

The generator ran out of gas so I used one of the jugs. It only took about two-thirds of the gas. I am going to keep track of it and see if I can figure how much power I have till the next refill.

After lunch yesterday I did go back to the neighbor’s house. The first thing I did was go through each room one by one and check it out from the center of the room. I didn’t find any more zombies, though I did scare myself when I caught my image in a mirror. Still, it was better to be scared than totally fucked later by a secret zombie.

I took the water, opening the case and loading it into my pack by the bottle. I then went back to Home Base and dropped it off. This took about four trips, mostly because my back started killing me on the second trip. When you don’t have a hospital to go to, it is funny how much you listen to your body for signs of pain.

I searched the upstairs and found more bedrooms. I found a kid’s room which really freaked me out. It was a girl’s room and she had plenty of pictures of herself everywhere. A collage she made herself declared her to be seven. She had pretty blonde hair that was almost white.

I am sure she was dead somewhere, walking around and trying to bite someone’s leg. That was a fucking depressing thought.

The parent’s bedroom was less depressing. Oh I am sure one of them was decomposing downstairs but I didn’t see any photos. That made it easier.

The guy was the same size as me so I stole his jeans. Home Base has plenty of clothes but the former owners had slacks and other nice things. I wanted something more durable and harder to chew through. I stole the jeans and a few sweaters. With no power, it was just cold all the time. That is why I took the comforter too.

I decided to open the presents after all. There were dolls, some clothes and a drawing starter kit. I nearly cheered when I found a Nintendo DSI. Then I though about the poor girl who would never get her parent’s gift. I took the pink DSI and the handful of games they had got her.

So yeah, when I run the generator for the hour, I use it to power this computer, a toaster oven and the Nintendo DS. I am sure survival experts could come up with better uses for the power but dude, you have no idea how bored I get. I played Cooking Mama for four hours last night and that never got old.

Today I am roasting some of the chicken. I can’t really keep anything cold for long. Right now it is pretty cold since there is no heat but it is not technically freezing cold. I am going to burn through this meat pretty fast but it is going to be great while it lasts.

For today, I am using parsley and seasoning salt on the chicken. I am hoping it makes an orange crust of salty goodness. I am really going all out and baking some peas as well. I wish I could find a toaster oven cook book because this is getting ridiculous.

What really worries me is that it is getting colder. Right now I have been fine just wearing my shoes and jacket all day long but last night was a bitch. It was almost too cold to sleep. I need to come up with a heat source that doesn’t rely on electricity. There is a fireplace which I might have to try. I have never lived in a house with a fireplace but I remember a friend saying that if they aren’t kept clean, they can clog up and choke your ass with smoke. This fireplace looks clean, but then most of Home Base is spotless. Raymond and Brett were tidy guys. For the most part I appreciate that but it is hard to tell if the chimney is clear.

Plus, would zombies notice the smoking chimney? Shit, I wouldn’t think so but I wouldn’t guess that zombies would try to watch television either. Shit, do I even have stuff to burn?

I think I will eat and debate how cold I want to get tonight.

January 8th

Jan 8th, 2010

Jimmy Varn here and I am still alive. I’m about five pounds lighter from shitting myself in terror but hey, I’m still alive.

Yesterday I went on a scavenging run. It was just next door but I got prepared. I took a leather jacket that was too short for me and wrapped it around my left arm. This is what they recommend you do if you have to fight someone with a knife, but I figure it would work for a biting zombie. In my other hand I had my trusty lead pipe. I also had a big backpack that I found in the basement. I thought I was ready.

You know, I don’t have a key for the place? I can lock it from the inside, but I have no way to lock it from the outside and get back in? That is the definition of sucking. I left the door unlocked and prayed.

I went outside and nothing leaped at me from the bushes. I did notice that Home Base had a fence around the back yard, and there was a stack of boxes in front of the gate. I think Chuck must have put it there to block the gate. The boxes had Halloween decorations and some summer clothes. I think he must have gotten them from Home Base, but as crowded as Home Base is, I wonder where they were stored originally. Funny how I obsess about these things.

The neighbor’s house was locked. I got to do something that I only had seen in movies, I got to kick a door in. My first kick was weak. I was holding back subconsciously. Kicking a door in is not something you are supposed to do. I stood there, well aware that zombies could be coming down the street, and psyched myself up to kick the door in.

KICK! This time the door flew open. The sound was deafening. The door flew back and hit a wall and came back around again. I looked around but other than a bored zombie across the street, no one seemed alerted by the sound.

I went in fast. I poked my head into the living room: all clear. The Christmas tree made me pause. It had gifts under the tree. Do I open them? I decided to keep searching the house first.

I poked my head into the bedroom: all clear. I ignored the stairs and poked my head into the dining room: all clear. After that, I went into the kitchen.

Did you see the bonehead mistake I did?

The kitchen was great. These people cooked. They had fruit out but it was old. It was the same for the three different bags of bread. The fridge had a lot of juices but I didn’t trust them. I took the butter, the cheese and some lunchmeats. They were sealed which was good enough for me.

I also found a 12 pack of Coca-cola. I opened and chugged one can right there. Fuck, I missed caffeine. I felt instantly upbeat. Or maybe I was just wired. It was the best damn coke ever.

It was the freezer that made me happy. Being January, it hadn’t really warmed up at all the last few days. The power was out that freezer was still cold. They had frozen chicken, bags of vegetables and even a few dessert pie slices. The big find was two glorious steaks. Holy shit, I didn’t know how I was going to cook them in my toaster over but I was sure as fuck going to try.

The shelves were full of canned food. It was mostly beans and tomato sauce but I grabbed them. My pack was getting heavy but I was too damn hungry to care. The thought of leaving anything behind was unthinkable. I put way too fucking much in my pack and barely got it closed back up.

My pack was full and there were 2 cases of bottled water sitting on the shelf. I would need both hands to carry it but that would mean putting down my lead pipe. I decided to just take the food and come back for the water to put in my pack. I knew I wouldn’t be able to raid this house in one trip.

Ha, I’m a raider now.

Anyway, I headed back. The kitchen had a way through the living room so I went there. I walked between the dead TV and the couch that was up against the wall.

That was when I saw the zombie lying on the couch. He had one arm under his head and was chilling. He was staring at the television like he was watching something.

It is also when he saw me.

I screamed. The zombie moaned. I jumped and fell backwards from the weight in the pack. The zombie sat up and stumbled towards me. I slipped out of the pack strap and stood up. Couch Zombie reached for me like I reached for those steaks in the fridge.

I pretty much freaked out. I mean, what the fuck? I thought the place was clear and I had been in the house for at least thirty minutes. It had been here the whole time?

I went ape-shit on it. I hit it in the head with my pipe, and it sort of fell over sideways slowly. My lead pipe was already smacking into the legs before it had finished hitting the ground. I just kept hitting it over and over again. It would twitch and move and I would keep hitting it. The crunching of the bones and soft squishy meat sounds blurred together.

Fuck. I was still alive. To be fair, it wasn’t even close to being a fair fight but damn, I was shaking. I couldn’t believe how I had missed him. I felt so vulnerable. I picked my pack up and ran back to Home Base. I never did go back for the water.

That was yesterday. I fired up the toaster oven and am broiling the steak now. I smothered it in garlic powder and onion powder. Maybe after I eat the steak, I will go for the water.

Maybe I will just stay here.

January 7th

Jimmy here and I am still alive.

I have been here at Home Base for nearly a week and I haven’t done shit. I want to say it is because I was fucking traumatized at my old job and I needed some time to relax, but I don’t think that is it. I think the truth is I was afraid to really know how fucked I am.

Raymond and Brett, the guys I think that used to own this place, they have a great home. The windows are bared and the locks on the doors are solid. I wonder if being a gay couple they feared being attacked. Whatever the reason, the house itself is like a little fort. The basement isn’t that big but it has room for the generator, which looks like it was dragged in recently. That must be Chuck’s work.

Chuck left me with ten kinds of rifles, over twenty pistols and more boxes of ammunition than a Red Dawn reenactment group. The weapons are in the bedroom and I moved them to the living room.

I am not ashamed to admit they scare the shit out of me. I have played a lot of videogame shooters and I have a vague idea of the merits of the rifles, but I am scared of blowing off my foot. I put them in the living room so I can just get used to seeing them. I am going to have to learn how to use them.

Next is water. I have a 16-pack of bottled water left. I also have a big ass barrel, a big bag of sand and a bag of charcoal. Chuck said he was going to make a water filter out of it. Fuck if I know how to do it. It just doesn’t look right to me.

Although I have to say, the water coming out of the taps looks fine. I have been through a couple of hurricanes and I know that water can go bad long before you see it go bad. I am damn tempted to drink it but then again, if I am wrong I can’t exactly reboot my game from a previous save. Fuck, I am so paranoid about the tap water, I am not using it to wash my clothes.

Food is the worse. I have eaten all of the canned food. I get the feeling that Raymond and Brett ate out a lot. Their fridge is covered in menus for places I would kill to eat again. Man, pizza, Chinese food and ribs. Really? Deliverable ribs? God I love Atlanta.

I am down to some stale bread, some fancy crackers and a half empty jar of peanut butter. There is a small battle of capers I am seriously debating eating. There is a big bag of bagel chips that I am slowly eating all day and it is the best damn thing I have ever eaten. My ass is starving.

Last on my supplies is entertainment. Crazy huh? I am in a weird state of laziness and boredom. There are almost no books here at all. I found a few books on world religion but I am not that bored yet. Religion seems like a sick joke to read about just now.

There are quite a few old board games. I play them from sunrise to sunset. I play Monopoly in the morning to get my math skills working. After lunch I play Trivia Pursuit with all the colors on the board. After that, if there is any daylight left, I play Yahtzee.

Man, I need a book to read. I tried the television and radio again. TV stations were still down and the radio wasn’t much better. I got excited when I found a radio station playing songs, but they were the same six songs over and over again. I waited two hours for a live person to come on but no one ever did.

For your information the six songs they were playing were

“It is the end of the world and I feel fine” by REM.
“Riding the Storm Out” by REO Speedwagon
“Don’t fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult.
“Bones” by the Killers
“Other Side” by Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Single Ladies” by Beyonce.

I’m not sure if that last song is meant to be ironic or was just a favorite of whoever programmed it. Again, pretty damn depressing. You would think if you had enough power to run a radio station, you would use it to inform people. Then again I am assuming anyone at the radio station is still alive.

So here is my plan. I am writing this in the morning. After I eat a healthy breakfast of peanut butter and crackers, I am taking my lead pipe and going to check out my neighbors. All of these houses look expensive, and they all look pretty damn empty. They have to have some sort of food, or water or please sweet baby Jesus, a science fiction book. Or erotica, that would be really nice.

Wish me luck.

January 6th

Jimmy Varn reporting in and I am still alive.

Shit, have Chuck and Annie really been gone for five days?

Today’s hot meal is toast for my peanut butter sandwich. The bread is pretty damn stale so I am toasting it. I am fucked on supplies. Chuck’s preparation for the apocalypse was apparently this generator, a whole lot of condoms in the upstairs bedroom and guns. I picked up one of those pistols and they are so fucking heavy. I have to admit that I am afraid to even try loading one.

Back to how I met Chuck and Annie. I must have been really exhausted because I slept the night and through most of the next day. I got up once to pee and the door was locked. I knocked and Annie opened it for me. I didn’t ask why I was locked up but she gave me an excuse anyway.

“We were worried that you might die in your sleep and come back as a zombie,” she said.

Don’t ask me how, but I could tell she was lying again.

I pissed and went back to sleep. When I awoke again, it was already dark. I knocked on the door and Chuck let me out.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “May I have some food?”

“Of course, man,” he said. “You are part of Home Base now. As long as you obey the rationing rules we’ll be okay.”

Chuck laid out the rationing rules and I thought he must have been drinking. It boiled down to three cans of food a day, two bottles of water and one beer a day. I was privately amused by his lack of nutritional knowledge but I kept it to myself.

I had a feeling these people were hiding something. They acted weird around me and it reminded me of how you act around children. There was another level of facts that they weren’t letting me in on.

You would think after the bullshit at the bookstore, I would be anxious to ditch these people. That wasn’t the case at all. They had a house, a sleeping bag, a generator and food I could eat. I felt pretty confident that I could handle whatever secret they were holding.

I finished my meal and went back to my room. It was dark and they wouldn’t let me have one of the candles. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I actually felt safer when they locked me in again. I intended to stay up and think but I went right back to sleep.

The next day I got up bright and early. I felt good after two solid nights of sleep. I figured today I would have to help out and by doing so; I might get a better idea of what was going on.

We all ate breakfast. My can of rations was a can of pinto beans. It was better than nothing. After breakfast, Annie put on a big coat and Chuck put his shoes on. I figured we were all going out. I got my jacket too.

“Hold up, Jimmy,” Chuck said. “You’re not going out today.”

“Really?” I said. “I’m ready. I know you said you needed me to help scout and get more supplies.”

Annie and Chuck looked at each other again. That was starting to get on my nerves. “Not this time, Jimmy,” Chuck said. “Annie has been cooped up and I promised I would take her. Plus, it is dangerous out there. If you don’t have a gun, you would get creamed and you haven’t been trained yet. You just stay here and keep an eye on things. We’ll be back soon.”

“Sure,” I said. Annie visibly relaxed. “When do you think I can get some gun training? I probably need to get started right away.”

Annie tensed back up. Yeah, I thought so.

“We’ll talk about it when we get back,” Chuck said a bit harshly. “In the mean time, stay here. It is too dangerous for you to go out. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t” I said.

When they left, they locked the door behind them. The fuckers didn’t offer to give me a key.

And that was the last I saw of them. I have been sleeping in my sleeping bag in the study but last night it was freezing cold. I am moving to the bedroom tonight. I just hope they haven’t been having wild monkey sex and made the bed a biohazard.

I wish I could say I miss them but I hardly knew them. What little I knew of them has me a bit worried. For one thing, how did they find this house? Why did they invite me in and yet act like they were afraid of letting me have any freedom? Shit, if it wasn’t for all the guns they left behind, I would almost guess they meant to leave me alone.

Whatever. I’m logging out and shutting down for the day. I have an epic game of Monopoly to play.