Deadfall: Survivors
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Authors: Richard Flunker
Deadfall
Survivors
Richard Flunker
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Flunker
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published
in the United States of America
First Publishing, 2012
ASIN :
B00ASHPYEW
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A special thank you to Susan
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To my survivors at home
Table of Contents
Entry 13 – Sometime
After Lunch
Entry 21 – How
We Got From There to Here. Who We Found.
Entry 22 – Night of the
Walking Dead
Entry 23 – Up
We Go. 15 Days Since I Started Writing.
Entry 25 – Actually, Day 16, at Night.
Entry 36 – Close Encounter of the Cult Kind
Entry 37 – Lessons in Engineering (trying to build stuff)
Entry 39 – A New Car and an Old Story
Entry 44 – Tower City of Pittsboro
From the Journal of Brian Orbison
American History after Deadfall
Volume 3
Survivors
Professor Jonathan
Gault
University of the Lakes
1
[1]
Today I saw two bears.
Yes, this is a big deal for me. You see, I have been hiking these mountains since I was a kid
, and my father first introduced me to my passion. In those twenty eight years (I’m thirty two now) and the thousands of miles I have hiked up and down these Blue Ridge Mountains, I have only seen one bear, and that one was locked up at Grandfather Mountain in their display.
I have seen traces of bears
; the gnawed on trees, the poop and the wrecked garbage cans, but I had yet to see one. I saw a couple while hiking out in Wyoming, and a couple of times on fishing trips in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota; but never here in my own backyard.
Plenty of others had seen bears. My father certainly had. Other h
iking buddies had. But never me; not by myself, and not with anyone else.
So the biggest reason
I’m finally getting on the game and writing this journal and record of my life up here, is because of this momentous event in my life. It’s kind of ironic, considering everything else that has happened recently; but to me, being able to see bears here in my mountains, is quite a big deal. And to top it off, I saw two bears in the very same day.
I am taking a trail that starts near my current house
, and leads down to the Blue Ridge Parkway, just south and east of the Mount Pisgah Inn. From there, I stay on the road through a few of the tunnels, and then take another trail that leads down south into Hendersonville. It should take me a few days to hike it, but the weather has been absolutely gorgeous lately, and, in all honesty, I am completely bored.
The first bear I saw
was just after coming down off of Black Balsam Knob. The bald offers an amazing view towards the east. There are no trees on this bald; hence the name. But the trail dips down east off of the bald, and quickly enters a very thick brush. The trail turns into a vegetation tunnel. After about one mile, going mostly downhill, I crossed a stream, and began the trip back up the next mountain, when I went around a quick cutback and nearly ran right into the animal.
I have no idea who was scared more
; the bear or me. I can really only tell you how I felt, and I was completely frantic. I dropped my hiking poles and high tailed it right back down the trail; back to the stream I had previously just crossed. It was, of course, the worst thing to do. I had some pepper spray with me, but I don’t think I thought about that little black container one time as I bounded down that trail. As far as I was concerned, that bear was going to tear my legs off of me.
When I reached the stream and crossed it, splashing water and mud in every direction, I slipped on something in the stream and that forced me to stop. At that point, I realized the bear was nowhere near me. It was
, in fact, running away as fast as it could, off trail. By the time I had reached the stream, the bear was also at the stream, but easily five hundred feet downstream. I sat on the ground as I watched the bear bound out of sight, but kept hearing it crashing away long after I had lost sight of it.
My heart finally caught up to me a few minutes later.
I sat there for probably ten minutes, although I’m not sure as I never checked my watch. I know I just sipped from my water, just waiting for the adrenaline to come back down to normal levels, which would be zero. Nothing even remotely that crazy had happened in the past five months.
That all happened sometime in the late morning. I was off on the trail again by eleven that morning.
I saw the second bear later that afternoon, in far different conditions.
About six or so miles later
, I came up over a ridge overlooking the campground site, just below the Pisgah Inn, when I saw the second bear. It was well far away, and I noticed it without my heart jumping clear out of my mouth. Nevertheless, I was excited because at least this time I would be able to observe this bear.
I dropped my pack
, dug out my camera, set it aside and turned it on. I picked out the bigger lens to get a nice clear picture, and found a small branch to rest it on. I peered into my camera and watched the bear, as it wandered through the empty campground. At first I thought that maybe it was somehow trying to find some remaining scraps of food, but it kept clawing at something just behind a tree. As I kept clicking at the camera, the bear refused to move away from that location; at times standing and swiping at whatever was behind my line of sight.
I picked up the camera and attempted to move to a better position in order to see what it was that the bear was trying to get at. It took some time
, but I was finally able to get into the line of sight of the tall object the bear was interested in. Already, from this distance, I knew something was off. A deep sinking feeling filled my stomach; a warm sick feeling. I brought the camera up and I immediately saw just what was bothering the bear; the same thing that had been bothering me, along with the rest of mankind for the past nine months.
A zombie.
Entry
2 - Details
[2]
I have a few things I think I need to make clear. First of all, I am really lazy when it comes to writing. I have terrible handwriting and it just bugs me. Before the world came to a halt, I used a computer almost exclusively, and now I have to write with my own hands; I get cramps and it’s just a pain. That is, in part, why it has taken me so long to get this thing started. I probably should have started months ago, but just the thought of writing on actual pieces of paper really kicked my procrastination into high gear.
That overall laziness affects my journal keeping
, as well. I do know the date. Today is April 28
th
, 2017. It was actually two days ago that I saw my two bears and the dead person, almost always referred to as a zombie. I know that it says “Entry 2” on top, and maybe I should just change it to chapter two, or part two, or something like that, and that I should keep a detailed date on every single one of my entries, but, once again, I must admit I’m kind of lazy that way. My dad would probably look at me right now and say something to the nature of “that laziness will kill you”. Of course, in his own way, he was right. But I don’t think that not getting the right number of days on my journal entries is going to get me ripped apart by a zombie.
I would also like to point out
that, in all honesty, I haven’t really been keeping track of the date. It hasn’t really mattered that much to me, although perhaps it should.
Ok, point
is made: I’m lazy when it comes to writing, and don’t get too concerned with how my sections are divided. Just look at the number. Or figure it out on your own. I’ll try to throw some dates in from time to time, if I feel it’s relevant. Also, I don’t know who YOU are, but it helps me think I am writing this for someone or to someone, so allow me that liberty, oh imaginary person.
You might wonder why I didn’t write last night and the answer is simple. In the nine months since the dead started walking, I had yet to see a single zombie up at these heights. My father and I had seen plenty at far lower altitudes
, but never this high. That being the case, I was a little rattled; a tad freaked out. These mountains had been my safe place this whole time, and now there was a chance this safety net was not as effective as I thought. Maybe not, but I wasn’t sure, so I was going to be safe. I slept especially high in a tree last night, and that would have made writing difficult.
But here I am today. I hung around Pisgah Inn
, and actually stayed in one of the rooms. I have yet to see any other zombie, and am beginning to think this might have been a fluke wandering one.
Back to the day I saw the bear.
The bear was obviously confused by the zombie. It’s a dead thing, it has no heart beat, and it doesn’t breathe. I’m really not sure what the bear made of it, and that’s probably why it was pawing at it curiously. From my own experience with zombies, which isn’t really THAT much, they will eat almost anything alive, but this one just stood there. It was clearly still alive, or better yet, active, as it moved its head a bit here and there, but it wasn’t moving much, if any.
(My father had a theory as to why the zombies never really came up the mountains
. Something to do with the energy required to walk up the slopes. My theory was that zombies just didn’t like the wonderful vistas up in the mountains.)
After about ten minutes, the bear finally decided to maul the poor thing.
It had wandered around the zombie a few times, probably deciding if this was something it could eat, and it seemed to have decided against it, when it suddenly lunged at the standing fool and took off its right arm in one swipe before removing its head in the third or fourth swipe. The whole body crumbled and that was that. The bear took one sniff of the corpse, and was off into the trees.
It took me a half hour to build up the courage to walk down there, just as much because of the bear as
because of the zombie. When I finally got down there, the zombie’s head was still alive in the sense that it was still looking around, so I crushed its skull with a log. Whatever controlled the body was clearly in the head, and removing those two from each other was usually a nice clear way to take one down.
I wandered around the grounds
, then walked up to the Inn and walked around a while up there, just to be sure that no dead were there. It was quite clear. Still, I was a bit terrified, so as I mentioned before, I picked the highest tree I knew I could sleep in, ate something and found a way to sleep that night.
Of course, last night, I slept really well
; on an actual bed again. I think I will take one more day here at the Inn. I have a good view south into the valleys and a good view in both directions of the Blue Ridge Parkway, just in case there are a few more stragglers. While I’m sitting around here in the once upon a time ear buzzing silence, I think I will attempt to describe just what has happened in my world.
And the rest of the world
, too.