Tamberlin's Account (3 page)

It’s been about 120 days. That feels pretty significant. Each entry is significant. I’m lucky.

You are lucky too.

So there’s this busy body I see almost every day that I haven’t “killed.” I think it’s because I can’t stand to get near him—not that I want to get near any of them.

He was my mailman—he was a creep before.

Something ate most of his lower face, but didn’t want to eat his Droopy lips—they just hang between cheeks that almost look like saggy butt cheeks and—they always reminded me of Droopy.

Did it disgust anyone but me that in the cartoon they had humans be attracted to that? Maybe you don’t know. Am I giving away my age?

So violent music and video games desensitize people to violence, supposedly, right?

What the fuck did all those moments in cartoon history do to the children watching animals getting romantic with “sexy” human women?

That insurance commercial with the pig that ends up with the guy’s girlfriend did that too. And shooter video games are sick?

There were a lot of things wrong with the way things were.

I’ve thought a lot about why this is happening—obviously settling on the parasite idea, but that’s mainly because it’s a lot more comfortable to think about than the most realistic explanation I can think of.

You know how places introduce species into an environment to get rid of pests or other problems? I’m almost too afraid to think that God might be doing that to us. How else do the dead come back? For all my life if someone asked, do I believe in life after death I’d say “yes,” one way or another.

One way or another.

For people who aren’t even agnostic- this all must be a hell of a thing to digest. How? How? How? How? How?
How?

Why?

I guess because of heavy metal and furries.

I guess it doesn’t matter.

They
are
.

There’s no denying that.

I wonder if anyone has taken shelter in my house. Are they dead? Did they face what I escaped?

I almost didn’t survive my first night in this house.

It was good that it was too big to fit under the bed. It was good that it was “fresh” enough that it couldn’t just crawl out of its flesh and get under. And it was good that the owner of this house had lamps that made pretty damn good clubs.

Oct 4 1:55pm

I’ve been avoiding the issue.

Winter is coming.

I told myself that it’s going to slow them down—maybe even stop them when it’s below freezing.

But it’s going to stop me too.

I don’t have supplies for winter. I don’t have supplies for a month.

2:02pm

What’s out there?

Oct 5 9:20am

Hi—How are you?

I wish we could compare notes.

As an end of the world, post apocalypse movies and books junkie I asked myself a million times before, what would I do? What would I do if there were zombies? What would I do if I woke up and I was alone in the world?

When it happened, it wasn’t quite like that.

Zombie movies gave me some ideas about what I could do.

But having skills would help.

This shit is the kind of thing I fantasized about when I thought I’d never get out of my stupid ass job.

Well, zombies would end that- Ha! Ha! Ha!

This actually feels more likely than getting out of my job did.

I couldn’t get through a day of work without getting
Grief
, by Dir en Grey, in my head. If you know the song, you’d completely understand.

I have some dog food and treats. Some flour and sugar and rice. There are a few more cans of veggies. One fruit cocktail. If I get bit, that’s going to be my last meal. I hope it has lots of cherries and pineapple—but I swear they’re mostly pears and grapes.

The bath tub is about ¼ full of water that I ran out of the pipes—that’s all the drinking water I have.

Winter is undoable here.

I only made it
this
far on my first try at supplies. I’m still on the same fucking road.

Damn it.

Oct 6 12:25pm

I was heading home.

I had about 8 ½ hours left in the car, between me and home.

Okay, let me back up.

We’d been at the resort for a week—really secluded, so we could catch up on a whole lot of years that were sewn together by now infrequent phone calls, some letters and plenty of emails.

We left our cars about a mile away—closer to ¾ a mile—to hike to our cabin. So private we didn’t know. We’d requested the most isolated cabin at the resort—so there were a lot of things we just didn’t see.

One of my friend’s husbands called at one point and was as clear about vague news broadcasts as he could be. Weird things in newspapers and word of mouth. Really weird things online. The word “hoax” came up.

Something weird was going on—he couldn’t wait until she got home.

My other friends turned off their phones when we first arrived.

We didn’t think much of hearing screams around a lake. There seemed to be a lot of helicopters. But what would we know? There was an abundance of sirens throughout each day, but accidents happen. There’d be lots of reasons for that. Campfires, boating accidents, drunks, fights, break-ins, heart attacks. Things happen.

But what we could not see and couldn’t understand then is terrifying in retrospect—in understanding. Like reaching under your car seat for the keys you dropped and finding out later there had been a poisonous snake under it.

We didn’t know people were leaving and the people who owned the resort had their own things to worry about.

Night five of six—seemed like
a lot
of sirens out there. And the perpetual pounding of helicopter propellers. Something really bad must have happened. My heart responded to the unknown tragedy. I remember the skin prickling on the back of my neck.

I was alone then, my friend Dee having crawled to bed sometime after 11:30. We were all exhausted from a week of the antics of longtime friends, so 11:30 felt pretty late. Dee and I’d been reminiscing – we also caught up on our latest horror movie discoveries – she being every bit a horror addict as me. We also bond over our love a Japanese music, especially Visual Kei.

Above any of my friends, I often felt we were too close to be anything but sisters.

That night is still so clear in my mind.

I was on the deck, listening to sirens. Loons on the lake—their “shrug-no-biggie-super familiar” song sounded eerie that night.

The soda in my hand was sweating.

My mouth was dry when the sirens woke me.

There was a chill wasn’t there? Maybe it was me.

The cabin was dark behind me and the woods were tall and black. The shadows were stubborn and ungiving. The moon was bright, but it still had a couple of days to fullness.

I knew my friends were awake, but they were lying still in their beds, probably thinking the same thing I was about the sirens.

I was perfectly comfortable on the deck of that unfamiliar building, in those unfamiliar woods, in the dark, in the middle of the night.

My watch face lit up in blue-green light and said 12:47.

I would never feel safe at night again.

That was the last time I’d ever stand outside and not question what was “out there.” Soon I’d be worried about what was hiding “in there” too.

I closed the screen door and swung the hook into the elbow of a bent nail that married the door to its frame.

The humidity was unforgiving, even at night, and we had not locked or even closed the inside door since we first unlocked it.

That night I closed it. Then I locked it.

All those sirens—there could be a manhunt going on, after all—that’s what I told myself.

Then I closed the curtains and checked them – I closed the ones that were open and locked the closed windows on the first floor.

I sipped my drink on the couch—the bubbles tingled against my lips and the carbonation sounded urgent against the roof of my mouth. Then I sat the bottle on a magazine on the coffee table.

I’ve thought about that Dr. Pepper a lot since then.

I lay down on the couch and watched heavy beads of moisture gather and run on the sweating plastic.

I dream of that.

1:00

I woke up to the sound of the toaster announcing the end of its cycle. I heard my friends talking—minus Dee, who I’d shortly find out was still sleeping. Big surprise. Dee’s definitely a 12 hour sleeper. I am more of a 5.

I smelled coffee brewing. It was just starting to fart—that’s what Marie called it.

Man in the Bathroom.

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle—fart, fart, silence.

It’s our last full day—let’s hit the lake.

I’m not a fan of deep water, but a five year reunion is no place to say, “I don’t want to do that with you.”

We took our coffee cups to the rowboat and took turns with the oars. The lake had a thin mist on it that matched the steam coming off our drinks.

Our talk that morning was the kind I yearn for—talk that matters. This was when we revealed our current real problems, fears, what was hurting us. Everything serious had been really nonchalant so far—all the rest had been fueled by our excitement of being back together.

When we talk like we talked that morning—inevitably, we’re all crying—then one of us, usually Carrie, just laughs for “no reason” and then we all laugh or someone says something stupid and it’s done.

In my memory it felt like something we
had
to do, because we knew we wouldn’t get another chance.

We didn’t bring up how quiet it was on the lake. No boats. No distant yelling. No screams. But there were regular helicopters passing over.

There were more sirens.

And something just didn’t feel right.

If you can imagine sitting on a lake and having a premonition there was going to be a nuclear strike, that’s what we were feeling.

Something climbed aboard that boat and the horrible thing embraced us. It loomed over us, even as we planned a crazy last night with forced enthusiasm.

Conversation felt forced. I forced myself to be the way I felt I should be.

But the two of my friends who were moms—their eyes were devouring invisible miles—looking for their kids.

Dee just looked troubled—there was flatness in her eyes because everything inside her perfectly cautious mind was preoccupied.

Something was gnawing at my insides.

It was about 9pm when we—first Lindsay, asked what the point would be of one more night since we were all going to have to get up so early. That we might as well get a head start and see the next morning through our own home’s windows. We all had a supporting reason to end our reunion early. I said there were a lot of things I’d put off at the house and since this was the last of my vacation time it’d be nice to have a day to catch up.

No one was disappointed that the others were agreeing to cut it short. We didn’t even care about paying for a day we wouldn’t be there. I was never in a habit of throwing away money. I loathed to rent or go to movies because you walk away with nothing but an experience. I always waited to buy and
own
that experience—cheap.

So not using that time should have really bothered me, but it didn’t. I didn’t give one shit about it or leaving all our groceries behind. I hardly even gave it a thought.

Carrie lived closest, about an hour away.

I had a 12 ½ hour drive ahead…

The resort office was open—the lights were on, anyway.

Marie went in and told them we were leaving. When she came out she casually told us the lady that ran the place with her husband, was sure we were gone—even though our vehicles were there.

We were saying our goodbye’s and I threw out a few, I felt necessary, jabs at my friends—only the friendly jack-assed kind—when the lady came out on the office steps.

I thought she looked horrible. Half dead. I’m guessing Marie thought we’d never see her.

“Good luck,” she said sincerely and gravely, I felt. She said it like she meant it because she knew the consequences of no luck.

I caught a glimpse of her husband, Chuck, when she went inside. He had a kitchen towel over one of his huge, thick hands. There was blood on the towel—a crescent moon was cut into the fatty ball of flesh under his thumb knuckle—like he had cut himself on a glass.

But we both know it wasn’t glass, right?  

I think I knew it then, but it was too weird to recognize. Or acknowledge.

I felt like crying and puking as I chucked my stuff in the trunk. My purse went on the front passenger seat.

I was waving to my friends and we were calling out goodbyes and smiling. I didn’t have to force any of this.

Then I watched their taillights come on and I followed them out. I was behind Lindsay to the first highway entrance. Then it was me and the road and a shitload of dark. That’s when I remembered I’d left my Dr. Pepper on the coffee table. I had the strangest impulse to go back for it. I ignored that.

It didn’t surprise me to see vehicles during bar hours. I didn’t know what to think of how many I saw because I wasn’t local. It was June—vacationers everywhere.