I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1
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Authors: Artie Cabrera
Tags: #Fantasy
ARTIE CABRERA
I’M NOT DEAD
THE JOURNALS OF CHARLES DUDLEY
Copyright © 2013 by Artie Cabrera/RiffRaff
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author.
Cover design by Artie Cabrera
This story is for those crawling out from beneath the wreckage to
fight again.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
YOU, ME, AND THE DEVIL MAKE THREE
CHARLIE & JERRY vs. THE APOCALYPSE
PUTTING YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD
DIABLO DEL MAR – (Devil of the Sea)
DER GEIST DES REICHS – (Ghost of the Empire)
THE SONORAN DESERT, ARIZONA – 1945
At sundown, the world escapes beyond the horizon without the promise of it ever coming back.
The cold bites at your face with its wicked little teeth until you can no longer breathe. The fury of winds push you around like a gang of schoolyard bullies as they shake their fists at you, taunting you to push back when all you want to do is forge forward and leave those bad things behind.
Disrepair.
Let me tell you a little story…we’re all going to die.
PART ONE
DIRTBAG PARADISE
QUEENS, NEW YORK: GROUND ZERO,
LOW PRIORITY
Saturday, December 14
th
, 2013
8:30 a.m.
I found some of Jerry on my lawn this morning—by the garbage pails—and the rest of him up along his driveway across the street. The idiot must’ve forgotten to lock up after himself again, but this time he wasn’t so lucky. The Deviants killed him late last night.
Jerry Haley was my best friend, and I’d known him all my life—since grade school, that is. Too bad the drag he called his ex-wife won’t care that he’s gone, and will wipe him from their children’s memories.
Good going, Jerry, I’m down a drinking buddy, and the bitch can have the house now!
I AM ALONE
—hung over and having the usual breakfast at
Dave’s Diner
again: the pot of coffee I help myself to from the service station, and these shitty Turkish cigarettes.
Whatever food remained in the walk-in has gone from sad to complete shit. Stale decaf coffee grinds and the lonely rock-hard lemon bundt left on a cake dish was today’s early bird special. It ain’t so bad once you get past the mold.
It’s 8:36 a.m., and I am delirious, frustrated, and too tired to cry. I am NUMB... no, fuck no, too tired to be numb, and there’s no time to feel.
The man with the trucker hat and mirrored sunglasses sitting by the flickering empty pastry display is staring me down again.
Shit
. No, no,
don’t wave.
Christ, I’m so goddamned tired of looking at these dead bastards, so I write this book, my life story, my only friend, and my only means of sanity—The Journals of Charles Dudley.
WHEN THE WORLD WENT TO SHIT
December 14
th
, 2013 (cont’d)
3:13 p.m.
In the wake of the storm, freeways remain lined with abandoned cars going nowhere, most cannibalized for their parts, and dozens with dead passengers rotting inside. Streets and sidewalks are complex mazes of cable-coiled debris, sinkholes, and homes punctured by fallen trees.
City officials sealed the island of Manhattan off with an iron fist.
Martial law, baby—no one gets in, no one gets out, and I’d like to see you try.
Many tried, and many failed once the evacuation ended.
The survivors I’ve met along the way, most of them taking refuge at makeshift communes and living destitute—none of us has any explanation for what happened after the tornadoes touched down and everything started changing.
All we do is speculate about what I call the Deviants and what we’ve learned during our encounters with the infected. A crash course in “zombies,” “the aliens,” “the walking-meat shits,” and it isn’t much other than…well, it’s not good.
I’ve categorized the contamination based on the common three stages which I call the “Trinity Epidemic.”
Category 1 (C1) is for minor symptoms—flu, skin rash, mild mutations—that sort of thing.
Category 2 (C2) leaves the carrier in a cataleptic state, defenseless, walking around with little to no signs of intelligent thought. Like Jerry’s emotional coma of an ex-wife Ingrid.
Category 3 (C3) is the holy shit of the epidemic, and that’s where it gets fun. The Deviants are ugly as hell and have an insatiable appetite for living things.
Most neighborhoods in Queens are dark and lawless. Others protected by armed civilians are just as unsafe. You’d be lucky to see any law enforcement or authority around here except for the trigger-happy jarheads keeping watch along the expressways or the occasional eye in the sky.
What are you waiting for, goddamnit?
We’ve had no communication with the outside world since the presidential address—no cable, no Internet, no radio, and no signal to our cell phones.
No one comes to visit, and I haven’t even seen a goddamn newspaper or one piece of mail in weeks. No signs of rescue, no signs of hope—so how will anyone know that I’M NOT DEAD?
PREY FOR THEM
Sunday, December 15
th
, 2013
9:16 p.m.
Death is readily available at my front door. I heard those fanged-tooth devils stomping around the outside of my house and on the neighbor’s roof again last night for what felt like an eternity. Clearly, my house has become the Deviants’ personal jungle gym and shit box. They did a number on the aluminum siding, they shit all over my lawn and wrecked my pick-up in the process—my beautiful truck. I should’ve parked her in the goddamn garage when I had the chance. Come on…you don’t touch the truck, man.
Jerry and I did our best to reinforce the doors and windows after the storm with steel contraptions, bars, and hinges. Jerry thought I was being paranoid, and I say paranoia is what’s kept me alive so far. Maybe he should have considered being paranoid too.
It saddens me to think Jerry might’ve tried making a quick dash over here before the Deviants mangled him. I’m sorry I wasn’t conscious to help, and I’m sorry he was too stupid to listen.
Those bastards decorated the street with Jerry’s innards: gristle, flesh, brain matter, and intestines stretched like a spider’s web from telephone pole to the fire hydrant.
I gathered what remained of his body and gave him a half-assed burial in his backyard this morning.
I put as much of Jerry as I could in trash bags and then in an old guitar case with pictures of his kids Tyler and Kendal.
He’s now three feet under his ex-wife’s squash garden by the fence where our pot used to grow. Neither of them ever ate the squash that Ingrid insisted Jerry grow in place of our nursery.
When I couldn’t bear the nausea and sadness that came over me, I hosed the rest of him away into the gutter. Maybe it wasn’t the ideal funeral for a friend, but I had limited time to prepare.
Jerry would’ve understood that, and he would be happy that I took in his ugly dog Alice Cooper and his esteemed Led Zeppelin collection for “safekeeping”...he’d want that.
In Memory of Jerry Haley—1976–2013...This one’s for you, buddy...Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On
”
Dear Jerry,
Hey, bud, you should’ve seen yourself all over my lawn this morning…not cool, man. I wish you’d listened to me just this once and stayed inside. What the fuck were you thinking?
What am I supposed to do now? If you were alive, I’d kick your skinny little ass, but...I miss you already…you stupid bastard.
Anyway, I did my best to find you a resting place, and I thought maybe you would’ve appreciated me using your Gibson case as your coffin. I kept the guitar (Les Paul ’79).
It’s the thought that counts, right? I also put that picture of the boys at the zoo in there with you for company…I know that was your favorite picture of them.
Jerry, I said some shit over the last couple of days, but you were being a dick, and I didn’t mean any of it. I know I could have done a better job of being a friend, but you’re gone now, and I’m sorry, buddy.
Love,
Chuck
P.S. I took some more of your shit.
LAZARUS WILL HAVE TO WAIT
Monday, December 16
th
, 2013
5:45 p.m.
This will be the last night that darkness finds me walking amongst it. The night brings the bad things. The winds carry the call of the wild from every dark direction.
They’re coming.
168
th
Street looked like a Vatican yard sale. Statues of Jesus, hung from his wrists, arms stretched to the nails; St. Peter, a broken man, hunched over his crutch; Madonna wept with hands in prayer.