January 4th

Back again. I am still alive and a little pissed.

When I saw how many comments I had gotten on the blog, I got really excited. Here comes the rescue! It was 23 spam comments. Really? The world is ending and spam commenters are trying to get me to go to hot chick sites? Fucktards.

Still no Chuck and Annie. To be honest, I am kind of glad. I’ll try to explain why as I cook today’s hot meal. Today is chicken noodle soup. I am heating it longer cause yesterday was lukewarm. Baking soup in a toaster oven is a learning process.

So my first day out, I had no idea where I was going. I was just going. I thought I would run into the police or maybe the army. I was hoping to find somebody a bit more sane than the assholes I was locked in with. I was hoping to find somebody with their shit together.

I couldn’t find shit. It started to get dark and I noticed that the zombies didn’t care what time of day it was. I spent the first night on the roof of a gas station because I didn’t think any zombies could climb a ladder. I tried to sleep but that didn’t work out. I was too freaked out. I ate a muffin and tried to keep warm. I did find a lead pipe which cracked me up. I don’t think I have ever seen a real lead pipe and now here I am armed with one against the apocalypse.

It is really weird at night in Atlanta. Street lights come on which is weird cause I thought the power was out. The buildings are dark monoliths that would have given H.P Lovecraft conniptions of inspiration. The skyscrapers seem to absorb the night, turning darker and blocking the stars.

The next day I started moving right at dawn. I realized I needed a home. I knew it was far to go back to my apartment, and quite frankly, that didn’t seem like the safest place to go. A first floor apartment with big sunroom windows? Shit.

There were more zombies. The day before must have been a great recruitment day. You can tell the new ones because they had less dirt on them. They looked almost normal until you got close to them and they lurch at you like a three legged squirrel with epileptic seizures.

Any of those zombie fuckers get too close and I let them have it with the lead pipe. Hitting their skull and cracking it kills them but you know what else works? Clobbering them in the knee is the shit. Zombies don’t really defend themselves that well and I swear knees were made to be broken. One good whack and they go down.

I must have had a dozen one legged zombies crawling behind me.

I was in bad shape. I was starving, freezing my ass off and more scared than I have ever been in my life. I almost went into a Burger King for food. I opened the door and the smell made me throw up. I don’t know if it was rotting food or rotting people, but it was too much.

I was still puking when Chuck found me. He was a big guy. Six feet tall and kind of fat. The gun he had was huge, like some sort of Dirty Harry gun. He had a blond crew cut like he was in the military. When I saw him, I thought he was a fucking angel.

“Hey!” I yelled. “I’m alive!”

Chuck nodded. “Do you have a home?”

“No,” I said. “Do you have a place?”

He looked me over. He didn’t answer right away which made me nervous. I was also pissed, but I didn’t say anything. I just wanted a safe place. I wanted some place to fucking sit down and take a dump in peace.

Shit, I almost cried. He was taking too long and for one terrible moment, I thought he was going to tell me no. If he didn’t take me along, I was going to break. I knew it. I felt this terrible sense of being abandoned by this total stranger.

“Yeah, come on,” he said.

I thought about hugging him but I stopped myself. I smiled and thanked him and tried to play it cool. God, I just didn’t want to fuck it up.

We stopped by a convenience store on the way home. He asked me to watch his back as he went in and cleared it out. He used his gun, and it was so fucking loud. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Three shots before he killed the one zombie inside. He was a terrible aim. I didn’t say anything. My gun experience was Team Fortress 2 and even then I played a Pyro who doesn’t have to aim much.

I worried about the sounds. Brooks said in his guide that zombies were like sound locators. In his book, the gunshots should have brought every zombie for miles towards us. I expected the music from Left4Dead to kick in and then a horde to rush us.

Man, those zombies didn’t do jack. I watched one zombie keep reaching into a garbage can and we were like twenty yards from him. Gunshots didn’t mean shit to him.

“Fucking sand-digger,” Chuck said. Well, he didn’t say ‘digger’ but it rhymed with it. Ha, it is the apocalypse and I still can’t type the n-word much less say it.

The zombie was Indian by the way. I wasn’t thrilled to be with a racist but I was too happy to be with someone. I focused on the fact that Chuck had a gun and a safe place somewhere. Dealing with a racist is just what happens when you live in Georgia.

Chuck loaded up on supplies. He grabbed a bunch of potato chips, all of the canned foods and water bottles. He made me carry a big bag of charcoal briquettes. When I asked him if he had a grill, he laughed.

“No man,” he said. “You have to use charcoal to make a water filter. You make a layer of sand, and charcoal and sand again in a barrel. You pour the water in and collect it out of the bottom. I know about all sorts of tricks like that.”

You know, that didn’t sound right but I didn’t care. I was just glad someone had a plan. I carried that heavy ass charcoal bag and we went to Home Base as he called it.

Soup is done. I want to say something about Home Base first. I’ve been checking the place out and I found some mail addressed to Raymond and Brett. Outside the back door I found a pile of garbage that had a lot of photos of two really happy looking guys who hugged a lot. I think they used to own the house, and I don’t think they would ever be friends with someone like Chuck.

I brought their pictures back in. I cleaned them and tried not to think about the crap they were smeared with. I put the pictures around the house. It just felt right.

I am going to shut this down now and enjoy my food.