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.