After The Fall: Entry Three

2 full MRE

30 various can foods

5 pound bag of potatoes

4 things of garlic

24 full bottles of water

1 map

1 Pencil

1 M1911

2 Magazines

3 .45 caliber bullets

4 20 gauge Shells

1 hatchet

1 diesel powered generator

4 rolls of duct tape

Various packs of seeds

Various articles of male and female clothing

Score! The pantry had a bunch of can food, currently munching on a can of ravioli, and a pack of bottled water. It also had a bag of potatoes and a couple clutches of garlic, both of which looks like it’s trying to grow more of themselves. The attached garage also had a diesel generator and some vegetable seeds. The generator will be pretty helpful back at base. The green thumbs back at camp could likely use the seeds, the look like they have been kept pretty dry. I think that’s important. Biggest score of all, minus the food and water, has to be the duct tape.

Most of the closest upstairs still had clothes in it. The guy that lived here had the same jacket as my father. Since I found it all I can think about is if my parents survived or not. They were out of the country when the world turned upside down. I hadn’t spoken to them since before they left.

Anyway, this isn’t a place for me to talk about what happened before society shit the bed. You are here to know what happened after.

One thing no one ever mentions about the collapse of civilization is how fast it happens. Communication went down day one. Phones, radio stations, tv stations. None of that lasted the first day. Electricity lasted for four days. Water utilities held out for a week. The day before water stopped running it had done a lot of sputtering when in use so we filled up everything we could find to fill. Everything from empty bottles to garbage bags. That day was a hustle.

Mitch being the leader last until just after the water stopped running. He was caught sneaking peaks at some of the girls while they washed themselves. He took a beating from one of the other guys and, as they use to say, was voted off the island. By that I mean he was grabbed by the back of his neck and the belt of his pants and forced marched out the front door. It was then people had decided to go through his room and found he had also horded food and water. With those added back into the inventory a group of guys, myself included, decided to go room to room to make sure no one else had been stealing from the group. There were a few minor things but nothing to get worked up about. The people apologized and it was let go.

The biggest issue with that was that because of no power, none of the food we had gathered that had to be kept cold was going to last. We ate as much as we could, getting creative on how to make it without power. The best set up we had was a few of those small metal garbage cans that had the grating along the sides. Turn them on the side, flatten one side so the food does fall off and some pieces of wood from wherever they found it. It worked wonders. It was my first time ever having a hot pocket cooked over an open fire. Thankfully they were smart enough to do it in places where the smoke could get outside.

That posed a big problem though. Even though we had just eaten like low budget kings, it had effectively cut our food stores by quite a bit. It was then that we had to decide. Stay at the dorm and send some people out to find food, or everyone go their separate ways. A couple people decided to leave and try to make it home. The rest of us were from too far away to think it wise. We still held hope for the military in those days.

Four of us were chosen to go out and try to gather some supplies. So, Three others and myself loaded up into a car belonging to one of the girls that stayed behind. Armed with nothing more than some chair legs. Another thing our group learned the hard way, ground clearance is a must for the zombie apocalypse.

We had gone maybe three blocks before we ran into trouble. One of the things we did not think about before leaving the dorms was the fact that zombies had shown up just over a week ago, and what that would mean for driving conditions. What roads weren’t completely blocked by other vehicles, were blocked by the dead. Those moving and those not. We did our best to avoid the worst of it, but suddenly it went side ways. We took one wrong turn, drive right though a pile of bodies. Our driver, this time it wasn’t me fucking up, managed to lose control. Jumped a curb and ran right into a building. Fortunately, we weren’t speeding. None of us were injured, but we also couldn’t get the car to reverse.

Come to find out when we jumped the curb we managed to get the front end jammed on the building and the rear end on a useless fire hydrant. Some fucking luck. We were then faced with a problem. Do we just start hiking back to the door or continue on. We moved on.

After about ten minutes of walking we finally made it to where we were going. Just a small hole in the wall store that one of the others had known about. Our luck did manage to finally balance out a bit. We weren’t out of the red quite yet, but we were getting there.

Out front was a massive four door diesel truck. Flat black. Keys still in the ignition. Looks like the tank had just been filled when the shit had hit the fan. On top of it all, there was a handgun in the glove compartment. Full magazine.

Apparently I was the only one out of the four of us that had any experience with guns. My father was a military man. Marine. I had been shooting various weapons since I could wrap my little index finger around the trigger. This was also the reason I hadn’t talked to them for a while before the end started. We had gotten into another fight over me going to college and not joining the Marines. So needless to say, I ended up with it.

Getting inside the store took a few minutes since it was locked from the inside. It finally came down to just shattering the window and someone unlocking the door. We managed to pack the back of the truck with cases of bottled water, dry food, canned food, sports drinks. Bags full of lighters and lighter fluid. Toilet paper. All the toilet paper we could fit. Everything we thought that would be useful back in the dorms.

If you have never had the displease to smell what decomposing bodies smelled like you would never know it until you saw the body. It smells sweet. Not a good sweet mind you. Just sweet. It wasn’t until we found the body in the office that we learned what the smell was. Only one of us managed not to throw up. It wasn’t me.

It looked like he had been bitten on the arm. After that someone had shot him in the head so he didn’t turn. We know he didn’t do it himself because someone took the gun with them. He did leave behind two boxes of ammo for the handgun. He also had another magazine and a kit for cleaning the weapon.

All and all, it was a pretty good haul. Remember that karmic balance check book I mentioned before? It’s about to take a pretty big hit into the negative again.

The four of us, truck loaded down, laughed and told stories from our past as we headed back to the dorm. We had been seeing smoke since the world shit the bed so seeing a new pillar rising into the air didn’t have us too concerned, until we got within sight of the dorms. Fire and smoke was pouring out of every window on the first floor. Mitch standing in the quad watching it burn. Even from where we were we could see the doors were chained shut. Could hear the screams from inside.

David, in his anger, drove right up on the quad. Getting as close to the doors as possible so they could try and get the chain off. I went after Mitch.

He had obviously seen us coming and had started running for his car before we had ever stopped. He had no intention of letting me chase him down. I had no intentions of doing so. I had a few little friends that could all run faster than him. Without thinking, on pure instinct, I suddenly had the gun in my hand. Two rounds fired. Two rounds slamming into his back.

As he flopped to the ground I continued running over to him. He was still alive. Crawling for his car. Hearing the gasps. Watching him struggle to hold onto life. I was being torn a part by the rage and guilt I felt. The rage against him for setting the fire. The guilt for taking a mans life. I watched the life leave his eyes before putting one round into his head. Maybe he deserved to turn, maybe he didn’t. I just didn’t want to have to deal with him after. My first kill of the zombie apocalypse? A human male. Mitch. The peeping tom turned mass murderer.

I don’t know how they managed it, but they got the chains off the door and got it open. The entire first floor was engulfed in flames. By then we could already see that smoke had made it through all three floors. The flames were working on the second floor. The dorm was a lost cause and impossible to get into. No one was near the doors when they got opened. Our guess was that Mitch had managed to trap the others upstairs and set fire to the bottom floor.

No one came out of the building. No one had come back if they did in fact get out. We sat there as long as we could. Between the gun shots and the raging fire we were drawing a crowd of zombies. This is where we learned zombies have no sense of self preservation. With the truck jacked up off the ground like it was, not running, and us being quite inside the zombies were going straight for the building. Clawing at the windows. Banging on the walls. Some walking right inside the burning building. It a horrifying sight to see.

We talked it over for a minute and decided it might be best to leave the city all together. With no idea of the number of people or zombies in the city, it seemed like the safer play. So, just as it was getting dark, with the light of the fire behind us. We left the city and those we had been surviving with behind. I can still remember all their names.

Hannah Martin

Tilda Page

Alex Moss

Noah Bell

Curtis Payne

Hector Castro

Justine Fisher

Ginger Hodgson

Tara Clark

Rosa Bax

Doran Reid

Alberto Siciliano

Hagiwara Tamiko

Hu Shan

Rim Hae

The four that survived with me that night are DeShaun Marcus, Samuel Hayward and Carmelita Terronez. DeShaun and Carmelita are still back at the base. We lost Sam along the way.

Connor