The Zom Diary (2 page)

     As I sit smelling the unique perfume of boiling deer fat and lavender, I think back to my first days after the end, my first visitors, and the importance of soap.

     I ignored the news in those days.  Most of what I heard came from Bill over coffee in the mornings as he set me tasks mending this fence or pruning that row of trees.  He didn’t believe most of it himself, not owning a TV, but relying mainly on the radio and e-mails from friends.  Then one day the power went out.  It would come back randomly; sometimes popping fuses, but for the most part, it was gone. 

     Bill had me get water for him in big buckets and carry it to the house for him.  His mother, a sweet old lady I rarely saw, had taken ill after the last visit to the podiatrist.  She claimed some fellow with gangrenous feet had bitten her, or sneezed on her, or whatever.  Anyhow, I still remember that last morning I saw Bill alive.  I had shown up earlier than usual, but Bill was there waiting for me.  Man must have gotten up at four every morning.  He was smoking a cigarette and looking glassy eyed.

     “Mom says she’s feeling better.  Might be up helping around the house soon.”

     “That’s good.”  I said bending over to upright a blue bucket.

     “Awful stories from town.  I don’t know that the power will be up anytime soon.  Those crazies are tearing the whole damn world apart.”  He paused, took a deep and horrible rattling breath.  “I can’t get to the bank this week either.”

     “Don’t worry about that now, Bill.”  I smiled to myself.  Room and board came with the gig and most of my small paycheck stayed at the bank or the liquor store.  “Let’s get things settled up at your house first.”

     I can remember carrying bucket after bucket of water to the house; a seemingly endless tide of cooking and bath water.  Bill told me little snippets of news as I would take breaks.  The states were closing their borders, all of them, not just the ones that border with Mexico.  International flights were being turned back knowing full well they would crash long before making it back to safety.  There were puzzled doctors and puzzled families and, of course, politicians who had all the answers.

     At some point the government enacted some doomsday plan, once it was clear that many of the people walking around were of the non-breathing variety.  Some said that the government was euthanizing entire hospitals, setting up huge burn sites for corpses, and disbanding the National Guard, sending troops home to try to help those they could.   I hadn’t seen one of these “zombies” at that point, but I will never forget the first time that I did.

     It was early, like most of my mornings, and I remember jumping from bed when I smelled the smoke.  It flowed in a column on the tree line and I knew that it led back to Bill’s.  I ran, cursing the lack of a phone or radio or any way of getting help, but once I got there, I knew it was too late. 

     The fire had pretty much burned out.  Some beams still fell out of the jumble of burning hell, but it must have been going all night.  I ran around the house three times calling Bill’s name.  I saw his truck and knew he wasn’t going to be anywhere if not there.  I sat down about fifty feet from the heat of the dying pile and took stock.  I was numb, not crying or hysterical but on the verge of despair.  I knew they were dead, but it wasn’t the first time someone I knew had died and far from the closest.  I guess I felt a little lonely.  This is when I looked up and saw it.

     Turning the corner down the long driveway, he was short, maybe five feet, six inches tall.  He looked like a migrant farm worker.  I thought he had seen the smoke and had come over from a neighbor’s farm to see if we needed help.  I started to rise and go greet him when I noticed his beard.  It was not a beard, but rather a great fan of dried blood and bits of scrabbly meat strings.  Closer now, I could see that his eyes were mad and they were not looking at the house. They were looking at me.

     “Holy shit!”  I had said.

     I didn’t pause long.  I ran into the barn and closed the door.  Last I’d looked; he was only twenty or so feet behind me and moving at a brisk if painful looking walk.  I cast about me for some form of defense –seeing only an old fishing rod, a basket, chairs.  My eyes settled on a kitchen knife.  I flew back to the door and opened it just as he negotiated the first step.

     I yelled, thrusting toward his belly, blade sinking to the handle as the knife passed through his shirt.  Out of this exaggerated wound burst an awful stream of blood, fluids, fat, fingers, intestines, organs, lips…   God!  It was awful, like a pressurized cannon of chewed people-parts.

     I fell backwards and the thing kept coming toward me.  I pushed at the door with my left foot and got it closed enough to slide over and put my weight against it, trapping his arm.  Shove, SHOVE, crack!  I felt and heard the bone snap and the appendage flop to the side as I pushed harder at the door. 

     To my right were an old umbrella and some odds and ends in an old butter churn, nothing to defend myself with.  I kept pushing on the door, and at some point my efforts unseated a horseshoe that hung there.  It scored my scalp and made me pause long enough for the thing to force its way in.

     I screamed and ran back all the way through to the back window.  I dropped down to the grass, a jarring drop, and as I ran I almost fell over another of the things.  This one was crawling in the grass, a blue bandana tied over its face and a samurai sword strapped to its back.  I didn’t even think I just stomped it over and over again.  The back of its head caved in and my boots were covered in this black shit.  I bent quickly and drew the sword; half a sword.  As I looked closer, it appeared to have been run over.  Thanks.

     Gutso had managed to spill himself out of the window behind me and I flailed at his approach with the broken half-katana.  The top of his head fell sideways leaving his jaw and neck behind.  I ran another fifteen feet, paused, threw up, and looked around.  Nothing.  I saw nothing but fruit trees, corpses and this big lovely barn rising above me.  Standing there covered in God awful shit, I knew I needed soap.  Badly.

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     I pour the soap into some Tupperware trays that had been lying around.  Three trays, maybe 13x9 inches, an inch and a half thick with soap. After it sets for a few hours, I will score the surfaces of the big blocks into the smaller bar-sized chucks.  Good  soap takes six weeks to cure.  The lye needs to mellow out and finish the saponification of all that fat.

      I leave the trays in my workspace, laid out on a big butcher block table that serves as a general hub of tinkering and food experimentation.  I step back in the cellar and grab a bottle of pear hooch. 

     One of the most useful things I’ve found in the barn has been an old hand operated press for making cider and oils.  I’m not a genius, but figuring out how to make hard cider isn’t too taxing.  Just let it sit.  As best I can, I keep a ready supply of this handy, for scavenged booze is often scarce. 

     I walk back out front and regard my surroundings.  Behind me looms the barn and relative safety.  Before me lays a small pasture.  It is about an acre in size and borders the beginning of the orchard.  Past the pump, an old wire electric fence runs next to the dirt road that begins as a continuation of the driveway and leads to the orchard.  Random out buildings, the animal enclosures, and the pit that was Bill’s house lays beyond this.  I have a fire pit set up at a safe distance off to the right and spend as much daylight as I can relaxing there.

     I take the hooch and sit in the old rusty garden chair next to the dying fire.  I take a long sour pull on the stuff and resign myself to boredom.  Life isn’t too hard here.  There is water, too much fruit for one man to eat, and some dried meat to add variety.  Preserving as much fruit as I can, both as cider and dried fruit, takes most of my effort.

     I grew some pot the first couple years I was alone, and by now, it pretty much takes care of reseeding itself.  I harvest some and keep it in mason jars for the off season.  Booze and the occasional joint serve to ease my boredom and loneliness, but I try not to get too careless, lest the dead sneak up on me.  I walk around the property twice a day checking fences and booby traps.  Most of these consist of monofilament wire attached to bells or anything that will make noise.  I haven’t seen too many people alive or dead in the past year thank God.  So I’m not really worried; just being cautious.

    I learned the sense of caution slowly during the first year or so after the end of normal human existence, and after the fire.  That first day was hard.  Cleaning myself up and retiring back to my shack.  (I hadn’t moved to the barn yet.) I remember being kind of freaked out.  I’d left my clothes in a pile next to the pump while doing the best I could to clean off the awful oily mess that covered me.  I remember the icy cold of the water, as I shook dumbly, and scraped water off of my body with the edge of my hand.  Orange tinted rivers ran down my calves and through my toes to mingle with the short and very coarse grass.

     I walked back to the shack naked except for my boots and boxers which I had deemed salvageable.  I entered the one big room of the shack.  The structure was rectangular with a door on the skinny end that faced the orchard.  There wasn’t much to the place, which is why I had originally enjoyed it so much.  One corner held a sink and half-fridge and a small electric range.  That served as my kitchen.  Opposite from it was my bathroom; a closet-sized room with a stand-up shower and toilet; no sink.  The rest of the space held my single bed, a coffee table and a few short bookshelves.  There was no ceiling, just the angle of the roof, supported by wooden frame, from which I had occasionally hung various plants and herbs to dry.

     That first morning, I burst through the door and grabbed fresh underwear and socks, a long sleeved t-shirt.  Heavy canvass overalls rounded out my ensemble.

     I’d left my guns behind with a lot of the stuff from my former life when I moved out to work for Bill.  I did remember my old knobkerrie and I grabbed it before admitting to myself that I had no plan, no idea what was out there, no line of communication, no family or friends nearby.   “Shit.”  I sat there breathing slowly through my nose and out my mouth.  “Shit.”

     I had sat very still that morning listening to the wind outside and listening to my breathing inside.  I leaped up and began pacing.  I needed a plan.  I had seen plenty of zombie movies and read up on the genre, but this was real.  Still, how hard could this be?  I fancied myself a modern day Omega Man, just without the cool apartment. 

     I knew I needed someplace defensible; preferably off the ground.  The barn was my first thought.  OK, clean the barn, gather useful stuff there and find some weapons.  I’d keep the shack habitable and use it for a fall back in case the barn was compromised.  The shack was out of the way with no road leading to it.  I could cut down the power lines that ran to it.  It didn’t look like I’d need them any time soon, and they might lead someone right to me.  The shack was also on the edge of the orchard.  Behind it lay the low hills that separated this small manmade oasis from the salty and lonesome desert on the other side.  Should everything else fail, I’d stop here, grab supplies, and bug out to the hills for a bit while things cool off and come back when I could. 

     I imagined two real threats.   First, these awful rotting corpses that wanted to chew on me.  And second, the living people. Starving, armed, and looking for a place to stay.  Well, this was my home now.  I didn’t feel too charitable toward those who could or would inevitably ruin my nice form of government—myself; Autonomous I.

     This moment of reverie and insight had been broken by the sudden rasping, as of someone sliding their body along the rough timbers of the shack’s outside walls.  I set my teeth, put on leather work gloves, hefted my knobkerrie and pushed open the door.

     In life, no measure of peace is bought without blood, or gore.  This was no exception.  Before me, spread out, perhaps fifteen feet from the closest other form stood a shambling crowd of thirty or so of the recently departed.  Perhaps they had come from the town that was about ten miles away.   Some looked local, farmers, church ladies, regular people.  Some looked out of place.  A soldier wandered with the milling group; his riffle still hanging from his outstretched arm.   Another looked like a L.A. lawyer who’d slept in his suit for weeks.  Possibly most disturbing was the prostitute with the enormous belly.  I remember having hoped it was swollen with people flesh and not some unborn horror.

     She was the one dragging around my shack and I started with her.  Whap! The knobkerrie connected with the side of her skull and she fell like a sack of grain.  This was too easy.  Spaced out as they were, I walked or jogged as needed, spinning, keeping an eye to every angle if possible.  LA lawyer.  Whap!  Church lady.  Whap! Teenage punk, resplendent in a black shirt that said “kill me” across it.  Whap!  Whap!  Carla from the bank:  Whap! On and on this went.  I sweated, took deeper breaths and soldiered on.  Whap!  Whap!  Whap!

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     I start.  The empty bottle of pear hooch clanks off of the chair and rolls behind me.  I’ve burned most of the morning sipping the stuff, staring into the embers of the fire and reliving past glories, for what they were.  I’m not wasted, but damn near close, and hungry, too.