Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (16 page)

03 Oct

Approx. 1900

It is time to begin formulating a plan. I’m down to 1.5 gallons of water and the number of undead in and around the field seems to be increasing. I find it difficult to think with the pain I’m experiencing. I keep telling myself to bring it back to basics. I need food, water and shelter. In today’s day and age, that isn’t enough.

As of this very minute, I can see six of the creatures from my vantage point. They don’t seem to know I’m here, and not one of them has made an attempt at the bleachers. With the range and accuracy of the MP-5, I dare not make any attempts to take them out, especially by the grainy green picture provided by my goggles.
The pain in my head is driving me mad. I’ve thought on a couple of occasions of just leaving the box, going down to the field and killing them all from behind with my knife. Then the pain subsides and I go back to reality and realize what a shit plan that is. When I urinate, I can see small amounts of blood. I figured this out when I accidentally pissed all over my hands today. I must have really socked my kidney when the helicopter autorotated to the ground.

First off, I need to figure out exactly where I am. After I do that, I need to figure out where I can go to get some better gear and try to communicate with Hotel 23. At this point I’m positive they know the aircraft is down. I will rest and recover until I get down to half a gallon of water. I have decided that at that point staying could mean death. It’s getting cold here at night, especially when you’re only wearing two layers of clothing and have a door with as much unintended ventilation as mine. Damn myself for getting so used to being around others.

My watch is busted, only showing the day under the dead hour and minute hands. I suppose I can just kill one of those things and take its watch. I need to know the exact time of day so that I can monitor sunrise and sunset. It’s been about nine months since a watch battery has been manufactured. I’m sure they have a decent shelf life, so I might as well get a digital watch with a timer and chronometer while I can still use one. It’s a shame I have to think of shit like this in my condition.

04 Oct

Approx. 0200

Another one of those things found its way up the bleachers at around midnight. I slid on my NVGs, trying to make sure when I turned them on that no green light would spill out around my eyes. I watched the corpse for five minutes as it stood there in front of the door at the top of the bleachers . . . then the batteries on my NVGs slowly started to fade out. I didn’t have any more AA batteries in my pack so I was forced to sit there in terror as the thing slid its hand in and around the broken glass.

Every piece of glass that hit the floor sounded like thunder to me. I came very close to turning on my flashlight but kept the urge at
bay, knowing that it would attract more of them. It reminded me of the scene from a dinosaur movie when the girl just couldn’t bring herself to turn the flashlight off to avoid being eaten by a Tyrannosaur. The only difference was, I was the scared girl who couldn’t turn the light on.

Now my species was becoming extinct.

After about thirty minutes of mental torture, the thing slipped and fell backward down the steps and hasn’t come back up since. I thought the sound of its falling would bring more, but so far this hasn’t happened. I should really pick up some batteries the next time I go shopping. For now, I have a tiny red LED light that I keep attached to my flight suit zipper. Writing this down in red light doesn’t seem to affect my night vision and the red light does not attract them. It is such a low-power LED that the creatures have not reacted to it as I sit here writing this.

Approx. 0600

The sun is peeking up above the trees. The glow of the morning is lighting up the area and revealing the undead milling about below around where the fifty-yard line should be. The windsocks on the goalposts are floating on the morning breeze. I didn’t get to sleep until about three hours ago and even then I woke up to every sound, every expansion and contraction of the bleachers heated by the morning sun.

This press box is starting to smell very bad. The bucket in the corner is filling up fast and the smell is starting to really fuck me up. I’ve noticed that the blood in my urine went away. My kidney area is still sore but not as bad as two days ago. I miss home. Was it the smoldering and burning San Antonio? Was it Arkansas? Was it Hotel 23? This is all cloudy to me right now. I just want to go home . . . somewhere happy, somewhere devoid of death and destruction. I wish that I could have good dreams, because that is the only way I can escape this.

05 Oct

Early AM

Water is all but gone. I maybe have the bottom eighth of a gallon left. When the chopper went down, we were headed north from Shreveport. I don’t know my exact location but after careful consideration I have decided to head southwest back in the general direction of Hotel 23. I need clean water to cleanse my head injury. Pus is seeping out of the open wound and I have to squeeze it every few hours to relieve the pressure. It’s also very hot around the laceration. At least I know my body is fighting the infection. I would normally move at night, but my water situation has forced me out into the dead world again. There are about a dozen creatures below and I know they will see or hear me when I leave the press box, as I’m not about to attempt to climb down behind the bleachers and risk a broken leg.

I’ve been thinking a little more about writing down what has been going on. I think I might ditch this for the time being as I am busy trying to get back, and writing in this situation could prove unhealthy (fatal). I must confess that I tried to stop but it didn’t last long. I write when I can and it makes me feel better. It may be sporadic or it may reflect my boredom at times but I stay more sane putting all this shit on paper.

As I write this, I’m trying to remember all my bank pin numbers and email password from before. I’ve had an account at my credit union for over ten years with the same pin and I can’t remember it! I had to really concentrate to remember my email password, the same one I used every day for years until the shit hit the fan.

I’ve packed my go bag, loaded the MP5 and put all the frequently needed items at the top of my bag for speed and convenience. Using a collapsed roll of rigging tape, I taped my knife sheath and survival knife to the left shoulder strap of my pack with the handle down. I want easy and quick access to it if I need to get personal with one of those things. I’ve rested enough that I think I can make it somewhere and maybe with luck hold up for a bit. I’m going to leave in one hour.

Late PM

I went to battle at the football field today. I stepped down out of the press box after gulping down the last bit of water. My pack was full and tight against my body, making my lower back hurt a bit. The first contestant on “The Headshot is Right” was a young male wearing one sneaker and a fucked-up green 7-UP T-shirt. He saw me come out of the box and immediately stumbled up the stairs. I still wasn’t sure of myself with this weapon so I let him get pretty close before the action chambered back and the top of his head flipped open like a cookie jar lid. He fell backward, making the bone in his leg snap louder than the bullet that ended him. More witnessed what I had done and came for me.

Again I had to deal with the talented tenth, a very different talented tenth than W. E. B. Du Bois. In my recent travels and travails, I’ve noticed that about one in ten of these things is either smarter, faster or both than their compatriots. I picked her out immediately. She was more aware and came at me with more coordination than the rest. She stood upright and walked briskly to me, while the others just stumbled. I gave her no quarter and shot her in the neck and head. She went down just as easily as the others, but she probably came from a hot zone. She wasn’t as radiated as the horrendous creature on the Coast Guard cutter, but I knew
the odd effect radiation had on them. It kept them on a more level playing field with the living—me.

I didn’t take care of all of them at the field. I just killed enough of them to keep the threat at a manageable level. My plan was to kill the ones I needed to, fall back to the far side of the field and circle around and retreat. I killed four and kept an eye on the other eight. I tried to get a good look at their wrists because I would be willing to make two passes if on the second pass I could pick up a watch from one of them. I couldn’t get a good look and quite frankly I was a little scared to linger on that field.

I made one pass and evacuated the area, heading southwest by compass until I came upon a sign that said “Oil City 10 mi.” I was at an intersection of the rural road and a two-lane highway. I walked a ten-yard offset to the road to avoid being seen by anything. In my experience in this world I’ve noticed the most lethal enemies are not the dead. From my vantage point at the crossroads I could see an old roadblock set up on the southbound side of the highway and a forty-car pileup on the northbound side. A small creek trickled from a drainage pipe near the road. I decided that my need of water temporarily outweighed my need to remain invisible, so I ventured over to the sound of the water.

As I approached the barrel-sized drain, I could swear I saw movement near the distant roadblock. I stood there for a full minute, just to make sure. Whatever it was, it didn’t move again. I bent down and drank water until the sound of something caught my attention. I picked up my head so fast I hit the back of it on the top of the drain, temporarily causing me to see stars. I shook it off and kept listening. I made out the sound of an engine, cycling in a rhythmic pitch. It wasn’t unlike an electric lawn mower. I tried to look in the direction I thought it was coming from, but I couldn’t see it no matter how much I strained my eyes. The sound vanished as quickly as it had come. I sat for a while thinking of what it could be. Motorcycle? No. It didn’t seem like that at all. It was something familiar.

I drank until I couldn’t anymore, filled up the water reservoir in my pack and moved on, keeping the thirty-foot offset. I saw all sorts of things that a man should never see along the way. Rotting corpses were strewn in and around the roadblock. They seemed
to lie in a bed of expended brass, as if an army had attempted to dispatch a horde of them here months ago. There were dead men standing on the highway in a hibernating daze, presumably with nothing to motivate them. I suppose they conserve energy that way. In the distance I could see a pack of dogs running across a field. I was downwind, so I’m pretty sure they didn’t know I was near. There were no signs of human life whatsoever.

The sun was getting lower in the sky and it was time for me to find some shelter for the evening so that I could attempt to relax my nerves and collect some thoughts. It must have been two or three miles from the intersection that I noticed a house sitting behind a tree line in the distance. I carefully approached, watching all sides and looking over my shoulder much more than I needed to. It was very quiet, and I was still shaken up from the day’s events. My kidney was full of water, and I had to pee. I thought back to playing hide and seek as a child, having to pee at all the wrong times. The house was an old 1950s era two-story. The paint was peeling off it seemingly before my eyes.

I sat and watched it for a very long time. I took notice of the burned-out late-model Chevy sitting a few meters to the side of the house. There were bullet holes in the hood and carriage. The first-floor windows of the home were boarded over, and old human remains were on the ground below the windows. I listened and watched until the fading light forced me to make a decision. The house seemed abandoned. I walked around it, looking for possible entry points. Even the front and back doors were boarded over. The only way in was to climb onto the roof and go in the unboarded upstairs windows.

I mustered all the courage I had and pulled my sore body up the porch pillar and onto the overhang leading to an upstairs window. I never would have made it had I not done pull-ups with the Marines every day back home. I sat up there admiring the view and listened to my surroundings. It was dark behind the window, so dark that I would not want to be in there for anything. The window was raised about six inches, giving airflow to a part of the thin white curtain. It blew in the breeze, or perhaps it was my breathing that was causing the curtain to flutter. I held off for what seemed like hours. I didn’t want to go in. I debated sleeping
outside but quickly ruled that out due to fear that I would roll off the roof and into the waiting arms of the dead. The sun’s light was filtered red through the atmosphere as it said its good-bye with my spirits on the western horizon. I reached into my pack and grabbed my flashlight.

I held my arm out to the window and it felt almost electric as I touched it. I tried to pull it up with one hand, but it had been in that position so long that it wouldn’t give. Using both my arms as well as my legs, I was able to get it high enough so that I could crawl in. I parted the curtain and twisted the tail cap on my light. The room appeared as normal as a room in an abandoned home could appear. The door was shut, the bed was made but there were bird droppings and leaves all over the floor.