February 8th

This is Jimmy Varn and I am still alive.

Even better, I found a ten speed bicycle yesterday. It was in the back yard of a house; chained up of course. One pistol shot took care of that. I am feeling like a real survivor now when I use a gun as a lockpick.

There was a bicycle pump sitting right next to it and I grabbed it too. It had been ages since I rode a bike but it felt nice to be able to coast down the street. I drove it back to Home Base and then walked back to retrieve my wheelbarrow.

It is hard to carry anything on it but for the first time I feel like I have some real mobility. All last night I kept planning what I was going to explore this morning. I kept thinking about rigging up some sort of basket or maybe a cart. My plans were very systematic and thorough. I was going to map out a square mile around me.

Shit, as soon as I got on that bicycle this morning, I just rode. I carried a backpack and four pistols. I picked a direction and rode down the street. I forgot about looting and just felt the wind in my face and the glorious feeling of speed.

It is really weird. The trip itself was pretty depressing. I came across so much dried blood, splattered on the roads. There were a few car crashes where I could see that bodies had been pulled out of cars. I saw too many damn dead children, eaten almost entirely. It was a fucking slaughterhouse but I was pretty upbeat because I was out of the house and riding something other than my own two legs.

I did stop at one house. Someone had spray painted the word ‘HELP” in big white letters. The house itself had the front door open and one of the windows was smashed in. I knew better than to stop and look but I stopped anyway. It was obvious that zombies had killed whatever survived here, but there was that chance, you know?

The house was another stockpile. Canned food was stacked in the living room in a very familiar manner. A generator sat in the living room, completely emptied of gas. There were four space heaters plugged up to it and I wondered how much gas they burned just to stay warm.

The kitchen was horrific. Body parts lay on the floor. There weren’t enough bits to make a third of a corpse. Whoever lived in this house died in the kitchen. Even more fucked up was a loaded shotgun sitting on the counter. Fuck, they died in the same room as their gun.

I checked the canned food and found that a shitload of chunky soup. Man, I have never been so grateful to see vegetable beef soup. Canned meat was something I could ration and not have to eat before it went bad. They were big ass cans, but I stuffed them into my backpack. I would have to come back for the rest later.

The rest of the house was pretty bare. There was no bottled water so I am guessing they were drinking tap water. There were plenty of cigarette packages which made me laugh. At least I don’t a nicotine habit to worry about during the apocalypse. No books, magazines, games or anything to keep themselves entertained. What the fuck were they doing? Last week I snatched a Golf magazine from a house just to have something to read. I was starting to wonder that this survivor might have been a terribly boring person.

Having said, I sure wish they were alive. I would kill to have someone to talk to.

I am going to finish my soup lunch and get back on the bike. I want to do some more riding while the sun is out.