Down the Rabbit Hole

It isn't happening to you.

That's what keeps me alive. I've slipped sideways into a world under attack from zombies, and none of my friends have slipped with me.

I'm still living wild, hanging around the fire lookout tower. I've got legs like tree trunks from climbing this thing night after night, and through the worst of winter I huddled in a shelter at its base. I dragged a bunch of solar panels up to the top, and they keep my batteries charged.
Batteries. Laptops, computers. Somehow I'm getting packets from another world. Why am I hiding from zombies while you're watching the Sopranos? I stopped blogging for a while. Why connect with a world I've lost? But today something happened that made me first question my sanity, then laugh out loud at the wonder of it all. Despite the horror, there is mystery and marvel in this dead world: I got email from myself.
Well, not exactly that, but my email account, which never updates and is never answered, contained a 'sent message' today:
Honey,
Wanna meet for lunch? I get off about ten minutes early today because of that meeting. Write me back.

So, I'm still alive, and still dating Bet, and we aren't dodging zombies on our lunch hour. I wish I was wherever I am instead of here. Hell, I guess I am there.
And how was your day?

Alive WTF

Got to recharge battery
running now

wtf is happening i still get current news
of a world not mine the internet is saying nothing happened

but wreckage and dead people walking, not my imagiination

safe for a moment. Maybe I'm in parallel hell? I saw the city fall, ran from living corpses. I haven't seen one since winter. I haven't seen anyone. No one answers my email, but this blog still admits I exist.

As if an area of some other world covered ours, still covers my area. A world of the dead. Maybe you are all alive and reading this blog.


It is my fondest hope.

Staying High

I live in a castle in the sky.

They freeze solid in the cold. They come back to life when they thaw.

I think they have nanobots in their heads. Someone's tried to make a resurrection machine, or a universal cure, or even a specific one. Never mind who and why.

I think we're all infected with benevolent nanobots, too stupid to realize they're not helping us by making our decaying bodies walk and eat. I cut myself and saw how fast it healed, and now I see minor scars have vanished and my appendix scar is almost gone. I've got little helpers in my body, and when I die they will try to save me.

I believe that they caused half of the deaths in the beginning, by making changes in human bodies. I suspect that they have corrected this, and the only reason I'm alive is that I'm infected with Version 1.1. Possibly they will correct the zombie-making flaw, but I bet not without outside intervention.

The bots are trying to keep us alive, and settling for keeping us moving. Someone didn't tell them how critical brain function is to full human life; they're happy if the mouth and legs work.

I got spam from a company saying they made nano-coatings. Ravings from a defective server, time-delayed email, deliberate taunting? Take your pick, or shovel, or machete.

I've fortified my fire tower and cut a fire break around it. I have a good tent up there, and about a hundred guns. There's a cage of barbed wire around the tent, and a big box of sand where I keep fires going.

While it's cold, I can hike back to the city for supplies. The second time I went, I got a hammer and smashed every revenant I saw. They shatter like rotten porcelain.

My heart is frozen and my body is full of nanobots.

It's our technology that sets us above the lower animals. How was your day?

Winter hurry up

I'm alive, I'm clear of the rotting city, and I've got leg muscles you wouldn't believe. I'm holed up in a fire tower in the foothills. Eight stories high, no way a zombie can climb it, and I've made trip after trip carrying things up to the top. At night I shiver, but they can't get me.
I found one wandering on the stairs one morning, dressed as a hunter. He'd gotten nearly two stories up before I heard him. I watched for a while, then dropped a rock on his head.
I swear something was moving inside his skull, where the brains should have been. How did he detect me? No way those ruined eyes see anything.
Winter is coming. I'll have to find a cave. Will they freeze solid this winter, crack and crumble? Will they thaw out next spring?
And who's got a hotspot going, somewhere close to me? Why is there still a net?


And how's your day been?

no help

got off the boat by swimming - left it far from bank. carried laptop in bag - gotta find food
send more later
stores empty - looted
trying house to house search
no zombies - where are they?
later - & how's yr day?

THE LIFE AQUATIC

I've gotten out onto the river in a small boat.

I know zip about boats. It's too dark to try to start the motor, but I pushed off from the dock and let it drift. After a quarter hour, I was far from both shores, so I dropped the anchor and waited. It works, I'm too far from shore. They stagger along the banks, but they don't notice me out here.

I think they see heat. Winter's going to suck at first, but I bet they can't take freezing. They're already getting scarce.

There's one I keep seeing, a pitiful thing. She must have been a teenager. The ones who killed her ripped her stomach open, and broke her jaw. She shuffles along as if her ankles are hobbled, wearing a t-shirt that says GREEN DAY, and yes, she is pretty green by now. Her mouth won't close and she wobbles as if her spine is broken. She's slowing down. Maybe she's starving for lack of brains.

Maybe they're all going to starve eventually. Then what?

No internet signal here. I'll send when I can.
At least I can sleep safely for one night. But I'm hungry... and how was your day?

Price of Gas

It's our technology that sets us above the lower animals.

It makes us better than the living dead as well. Matches and gas, that's my hi-tech solution. They chased me into a hardware store. Fifteen minutes later I chased them back out. They RAN AWAY. They can sense fire, but they can't fight it.

I've got an old metal bug sprayer, the kind they called a 'flit gun' when we were kids, so long ago in another world, with Chuck Berry on the radio and no George Romero on the screen. I've got it full of gas, and I have a big can of gas to refill it, and I have a ladder to go from roof to roof.

Burning Roaches in Zombie Town

When we were kids we'd burn out the cockroaches on summer nights from the edge of our playground. The dumper attracted them, and you'd go for a layup and crunch one under your bare feet. We'd get mad and light them up. First, a puddle of burning lighter fluid, then you spot a running roach and squirt light fluid on him. Then you draw a line of lighter fluid from him back to the fire. Presto - a line of fire chases the running roach and lights him up.
I've been doing that with dead people for days, from a rooftop. Every one I 'kill' is one less to kill me.

I am five blocks or so from the waterfront. There is still wi-fi and electricity, along with burning buildings and the stench of death. How was your day?