Nothing much happened today. Well, for us, anyway.
Bryndis chickened out on her "Raise the Roof" tour by refusing to climb the heating duct and see if there's a way get out of here that doesn't include, first, being eaten by a Zombie and, second, becoming one of the 'said' Zombies. She claims it's too windy and with her heels it might be too dangerous. I'd do it myself but I'm like, six foot two and weight a good two hundred pounds.
Beth has refused to come out of the change room; she's been in there almost fifty hours, or so. I've even promised to stop shouting "Zombie".
The big event today didn't include us.
A van pulled up, outside. It was a cause for celebration, as we all thought that some type of rescue was about to ensue. We were wrong, however.
The van swings into the parking lot and promptly putters out. I imagine that they were headed to the gas station, across the way, adjacent to the grocery store, and almost made it.
It sat there for a while, maybe a couple hours, with no sign of movement, except the van rocking back and forth, every so often. I'm sure it wasn't the type of van rocking that the mind immediately jumps to. Eventually the doors slid open, quietly. Out pop these four teenage boys that look like they belong to the trench coat mafia, long stringy black hair and makeup. Even, if the Zombies weren't strange enough these guys would have put the icing on the enchilada, so to say.
They jump out of the van, stealth like, and begin to creep, car by car, towards the gas station, one of them carrying a gas can.
I could see the guys on top of the Save More, the grocery store, watching, as well. I found part of me was pulling for them. Those four losers, I mean loners, out there battling the elements. The other part, though, irked by the ludicrous sight of them, couldn't wait to see them become the main ingredient in a geek sandwich. I imagine it was akin to watching a gladiator fight...back in the day.
Sure enough, the one in front, closest to the gas station, is going car by car by pressing his back to the metal car doors and then looking around to see if it's safe to go on to the next car. He backs up to a car and peers up and over the car door and a Zombie also pokes it's head up, from inside the car, and the munching begins.
I know Zombies are supposed to be mindless eating machines and I know this was just coincidence but it was pretty funny, all the same. The guy was flailing his arms about his head, hoping, I guess, to knock the Zombie away. But too late, dude, the thing's removed one of your ears and a good portion of skin around your skull, you're either going all the way down it's gullet or your one of them. Better days, my trench coat friend...better days.
The guy screams out, pretty much placing him and his buds on the Zombie radar. His friends flat out ran, no looking behind them, back into the van and slammed the door shut. I'm not sure why they all felt the need to go to the gas station anyway...you would think they'd elect one and then sit, wait, and watch. Oh, well.
We've been pissing in the trash bins and, well, we're gonna need to liberate, at least, one of the bathrooms tomorrow.
That's for sure.
Food's, also, becoming an issue. We have a handful of Paulo's sandwiches, he had been bringing a ton of food to work but was only eating a fraction of it all, and we've divided them up. But, seriously, a man can't live on half a PB&J a day.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
June 29
So what's happened.
We lost another one. Can't believe people are dying this fast. But let me start at the beginning, I might not have a lot of time to type...
We had someone, or something, in the bathroom. We all figure that when Trix went out for her 'final' smoke break she left the back door open. Something stumbled in, found it's way into the bathroom, and the door closed behind it. Luckily we have two bathrooms so we can take some time before trying to figure out what's in there. We're a clothing store so it's not like we have ton's of Zombie killing tools laying about.
Trix is still outside. She must have turned into a Zombie with a good amount of quickness, as she wasn't much of a meal, to begin with. Now she looks like a little Zombie lollypop walking around. Her memory must include the store, as she's outside banging on the glass windows, staring at all of us. It's a little disconcerting but, hey, what can you do?
The first night here, we didn't even think about sleeping. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves. Macy and Beth, the two new girls, locked themselves in change-rooms for the night. I guess there's a small amount of distrust, for whatever reason. That might be my fault. I always have to make light of situations so whenever things were getting to 'heavy' or quiet I kept finding myself screaming "ZOMBIE!!!" and pointing at some empty area of the store. It would appear that there's only so much of that you can take.
The phones are dead, land line as well as cells. But we've found that email still works, strange but I'm not complaining.
Bryndis kept the rest of us busy by filling empty pop bottles with water, Selma keeps a recycle bucket in the back and, luckily, it was pretty full of empties, in case the water gets turned off, at some point.
We had the radio on for a bit but that didn't last long and it was quite depressing, anyway. It was all Zombie all the time and then it stopped with the announcer screaming, bloody hell, and then just some gross lip smacking sounds, like a dog drinking from a bowl of water. Pretty disgusting.
So the next day rolls around and, again, we all just sit there, not sure of what to do with ourselves. We do discover, however, that the grocery store, across the parking lot, has access to their roof, as we can see a bunch of the employees walking around up there, with their cameras taking pictures of everything.
This is where tragedy strikes. We decide that one of us should get onto the roof and, maybe, find a way to communicate with the grocery store. But there doesn't seem to be a clear route to 'our' roof, from inside the store. Paulo, our boss, decides that he can get up there. He climbs up on a clothes rack then onto the top of the change rooms and then onto one of the big, industrial, heating vents and begins to shimmy to the wall, I guess so he can get a grasp on something there and climb towards the ceiling? Whatever the case, the whole heating vent collapsed and he ends of falling, with it. The heating vent hits the floor, looking like a stairway, angled up to the roof, with his body bent and twisted next to it.
Someone screamed, okay, it was me, but it wasn't nearly as shrill as everyone keeps telling me. And I can't believe that our boss dies and all anybody can talk about is how girlish my screaming sounded. Shallow fuckers. Not only that but he's dead, maybe, two minutes, before his body begins to twitch and move. So, okay, the Zombie thing is contagious, it would seem.
We quickly rushed him into the second bathroom and closed the door. Some of us wanted to open the back door and dump him out but, honestly, the risk was to high that a Zombie would be out there and manage to get in. And it wasn't like we had a lot of time to make a decision, his eyes were getting that hungry Trix-like look that we can see on her face.
So now we're stuck with no bathrooms and, to top it off, all the bottled water we were saving, is in there, as well. No water no toilet and another death. Pretty crazy.
But, on the bright side. One less mouth to feed and Bryndis thinks that she can climb up the heating duct and get to the roof, that way, since it's now, pretty much a tunnel to the top of the building.
We'll see, we're just gonna wait until it's light out and then she's going to try to squirm up there.
We lost another one. Can't believe people are dying this fast. But let me start at the beginning, I might not have a lot of time to type...
We had someone, or something, in the bathroom. We all figure that when Trix went out for her 'final' smoke break she left the back door open. Something stumbled in, found it's way into the bathroom, and the door closed behind it. Luckily we have two bathrooms so we can take some time before trying to figure out what's in there. We're a clothing store so it's not like we have ton's of Zombie killing tools laying about.
Trix is still outside. She must have turned into a Zombie with a good amount of quickness, as she wasn't much of a meal, to begin with. Now she looks like a little Zombie lollypop walking around. Her memory must include the store, as she's outside banging on the glass windows, staring at all of us. It's a little disconcerting but, hey, what can you do?
The first night here, we didn't even think about sleeping. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves. Macy and Beth, the two new girls, locked themselves in change-rooms for the night. I guess there's a small amount of distrust, for whatever reason. That might be my fault. I always have to make light of situations so whenever things were getting to 'heavy' or quiet I kept finding myself screaming "ZOMBIE!!!" and pointing at some empty area of the store. It would appear that there's only so much of that you can take.
The phones are dead, land line as well as cells. But we've found that email still works, strange but I'm not complaining.
Bryndis kept the rest of us busy by filling empty pop bottles with water, Selma keeps a recycle bucket in the back and, luckily, it was pretty full of empties, in case the water gets turned off, at some point.
We had the radio on for a bit but that didn't last long and it was quite depressing, anyway. It was all Zombie all the time and then it stopped with the announcer screaming, bloody hell, and then just some gross lip smacking sounds, like a dog drinking from a bowl of water. Pretty disgusting.
So the next day rolls around and, again, we all just sit there, not sure of what to do with ourselves. We do discover, however, that the grocery store, across the parking lot, has access to their roof, as we can see a bunch of the employees walking around up there, with their cameras taking pictures of everything.
This is where tragedy strikes. We decide that one of us should get onto the roof and, maybe, find a way to communicate with the grocery store. But there doesn't seem to be a clear route to 'our' roof, from inside the store. Paulo, our boss, decides that he can get up there. He climbs up on a clothes rack then onto the top of the change rooms and then onto one of the big, industrial, heating vents and begins to shimmy to the wall, I guess so he can get a grasp on something there and climb towards the ceiling? Whatever the case, the whole heating vent collapsed and he ends of falling, with it. The heating vent hits the floor, looking like a stairway, angled up to the roof, with his body bent and twisted next to it.
Someone screamed, okay, it was me, but it wasn't nearly as shrill as everyone keeps telling me. And I can't believe that our boss dies and all anybody can talk about is how girlish my screaming sounded. Shallow fuckers. Not only that but he's dead, maybe, two minutes, before his body begins to twitch and move. So, okay, the Zombie thing is contagious, it would seem.
We quickly rushed him into the second bathroom and closed the door. Some of us wanted to open the back door and dump him out but, honestly, the risk was to high that a Zombie would be out there and manage to get in. And it wasn't like we had a lot of time to make a decision, his eyes were getting that hungry Trix-like look that we can see on her face.
So now we're stuck with no bathrooms and, to top it off, all the bottled water we were saving, is in there, as well. No water no toilet and another death. Pretty crazy.
But, on the bright side. One less mouth to feed and Bryndis thinks that she can climb up the heating duct and get to the roof, that way, since it's now, pretty much a tunnel to the top of the building.
We'll see, we're just gonna wait until it's light out and then she's going to try to squirm up there.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
June 26
Alright, don't know where to begin with this.
Zombies...they're real. Or, at the very least, a very factual replication of a Zombie does, apparently, exist.
While there's still electricity and while I can still hop onto the Pita Pit's free wireless, I'm going to attempt to keep a documentation of our post Zombie days. I was going to write 'last days' but I'm feeling optimistic, probably due to the flask of whiskey that Bryndis keeps in her purse, a flask that, I'm sure, won't keep me optimistic for long, it's, by far, not large enough.
It begins...
We were at work, Stitches - Clothing for Men, when a lady came bursting through the door.
"Zombies!" she yells.
Can you fucking believe it? We all started laughing. Who would have believed her? Just a few days before we had a guy come running in claiming Jesus was just outside. Anything was possible in our neighborhood, it would seem.
So we're all laughing and then a car outside blows up. The windows rattle and our attention is pulled to the parking lot. People are running fucking everywhere, left, right and everywhere. Behind them are more people but these people aren't like the people you're used to seeing. Their skin is flayed and falling off in peels, eyes pushed out of their sockets and bouncing on their cheeks, and it's like they're learning how to walk. Stumbling over each other they still manage to grab people and pull them to their mouths.
We're all astounded, standing behind the plate glass windows, our mouths a-fucking-gape.
And Bryndis, pulling herself together, looks at this lady that's come bursting into our 'clothes folding haven' and sees that her arm is bleeding. Calm as hell, she asks. "What happened to your arm?"
The lady looks at her confused, for a half second, and manages to figure out what's going to happen next, before the rest of us do, and utters one word. "No." It comes out as more a question than a statement or demand.
Bryndis, with one hand opening the door and the other pushing on the lady's chest, shoves her back outside and then locks the door and closes the security gates and then turns to the rest of us. "Zombie Apocalypse, people, buckle up!" As if she's been waiting for this day the whole of her life.
Still, after the explosion, the bouncing eye, the dead people running around outside, the rest of us are standing still, taking it all in. As if the passage of time will sort out all the relevant information that we need to comprehend.
"Fucking Zombies, people?!" Bryndis says, looking at each of us, through her rectangular, librarian, glasses.
"But..." I start, about to say something lame like, Zombies aren't real. She walks up to me, matter of fact, and slaps the shit out of my left cheek, sending my brain rattling through my skull.
"Shit, Bryndis." I mutter, trying to keep my cool, in front of everyone else.
I can hear our boss, Paulo, snickering from somewhere.
"Man up, people are getting eaten out there. We need to secure this place, now!"
Everyone begins to run around checking doors and what not.
Macy, the new girl, sitting at the tuxedo desk, pipes up. "Where's Trix?"
Trix is outside, we all realize, at the same time, on a smoke break.
And as though she were being called, telepathically, Trix comes running down the plate glass windows, towards the door, cigarette stuck between her lips.
She gets to the door and smashes into it, thinking it was still unlocked. Her small body bounces off of it. She falls backwards onto her ass but is back up immediately. That cigarette still in place. She runs up to the door, this time stopping short of throwing her body into the glass, and begins to bang at it with her fists.
"It's too late." I find myself saying. "We can't take the chance."
So we all stand there, for a few minutes. With our eyes we each say goodbye to her. Trix was fun, we all liked her. She'll be missed. In retrospect, we stood there long enough, honestly, that we could have opened the door tens of times. I feel a little bit bad about that but we were all scared and nobody, really, knew what to do. Besides the way she was looking at everyone, that guilty glare, was a little uncalled for. It made everyone, totally, uncomfortable. It wasn't like we didn't feel bad enough about things, as it were, but now she had to go and throw her own stuff on top of it all? Bryndis and I began to close the gates on all the other windows, because we couldn't expect the glass to hold forever, and even then the gates would probably fail, at some point. But Trix just walks on the other side of the windows, mirroring us as we slam the gates closed, window by window, pleading with us to open up...or, at least, pass her keys through the mail slot, so she can get into her car. I think...that's reasonable, so I walk to her purse and begin fumbling around for them.
From behind me I can hear everyone gasp. Some Zombie dude has a hold of Trix's hair and is pulling her back. But, she has a good hold on the door handle and is refusing to let go. You can see the muscles in her forearms bulging and, quit honestly, I'm impressed. She's stronger than her little, lithe, frame would suggest. Quickly I run to the door, her keys in my hand, and I drop them through the mail slot, to where her feet would be, were they not in the hands of two other Zombies that have joined the struggle. Now, she looks like Supergirl, flying at the door, her feet up in the air and a whole herd of them, now, pulling her up, up, and away. She looks, quickly at the keys on the cement and then at me, then she's gone, pulled into the throng of Dead that are moaning away and pulling at her.
Then she's gone.
We all take a sigh of relief. It was way too uncomfortable a situation. You'd think that, in an Apocalypse, that you be warmed up to a scenario, like that, instead of just thrown head over fucking heals, like that.
Selma, our tailor, walks out from the back. "I closed the back door but I think someone there, in bathroom. Loud noises." By the way, I'm not being racist here, when she's stressed, her English goes downhill, and fast.
So the rest of us walk toward the back and now, we're trying to figure out what to do. It's been a few hours so, whoever's in there, isn't smart enough to open the door. It could only be a Zombie. WTF.
Zombies...they're real. Or, at the very least, a very factual replication of a Zombie does, apparently, exist.
While there's still electricity and while I can still hop onto the Pita Pit's free wireless, I'm going to attempt to keep a documentation of our post Zombie days. I was going to write 'last days' but I'm feeling optimistic, probably due to the flask of whiskey that Bryndis keeps in her purse, a flask that, I'm sure, won't keep me optimistic for long, it's, by far, not large enough.
It begins...
We were at work, Stitches - Clothing for Men, when a lady came bursting through the door.
"Zombies!" she yells.
Can you fucking believe it? We all started laughing. Who would have believed her? Just a few days before we had a guy come running in claiming Jesus was just outside. Anything was possible in our neighborhood, it would seem.
So we're all laughing and then a car outside blows up. The windows rattle and our attention is pulled to the parking lot. People are running fucking everywhere, left, right and everywhere. Behind them are more people but these people aren't like the people you're used to seeing. Their skin is flayed and falling off in peels, eyes pushed out of their sockets and bouncing on their cheeks, and it's like they're learning how to walk. Stumbling over each other they still manage to grab people and pull them to their mouths.
We're all astounded, standing behind the plate glass windows, our mouths a-fucking-gape.
And Bryndis, pulling herself together, looks at this lady that's come bursting into our 'clothes folding haven' and sees that her arm is bleeding. Calm as hell, she asks. "What happened to your arm?"
The lady looks at her confused, for a half second, and manages to figure out what's going to happen next, before the rest of us do, and utters one word. "No." It comes out as more a question than a statement or demand.
Bryndis, with one hand opening the door and the other pushing on the lady's chest, shoves her back outside and then locks the door and closes the security gates and then turns to the rest of us. "Zombie Apocalypse, people, buckle up!" As if she's been waiting for this day the whole of her life.
Still, after the explosion, the bouncing eye, the dead people running around outside, the rest of us are standing still, taking it all in. As if the passage of time will sort out all the relevant information that we need to comprehend.
"Fucking Zombies, people?!" Bryndis says, looking at each of us, through her rectangular, librarian, glasses.
"But..." I start, about to say something lame like, Zombies aren't real. She walks up to me, matter of fact, and slaps the shit out of my left cheek, sending my brain rattling through my skull.
"Shit, Bryndis." I mutter, trying to keep my cool, in front of everyone else.
I can hear our boss, Paulo, snickering from somewhere.
"Man up, people are getting eaten out there. We need to secure this place, now!"
Everyone begins to run around checking doors and what not.
Macy, the new girl, sitting at the tuxedo desk, pipes up. "Where's Trix?"
Trix is outside, we all realize, at the same time, on a smoke break.
And as though she were being called, telepathically, Trix comes running down the plate glass windows, towards the door, cigarette stuck between her lips.
She gets to the door and smashes into it, thinking it was still unlocked. Her small body bounces off of it. She falls backwards onto her ass but is back up immediately. That cigarette still in place. She runs up to the door, this time stopping short of throwing her body into the glass, and begins to bang at it with her fists.
"It's too late." I find myself saying. "We can't take the chance."
So we all stand there, for a few minutes. With our eyes we each say goodbye to her. Trix was fun, we all liked her. She'll be missed. In retrospect, we stood there long enough, honestly, that we could have opened the door tens of times. I feel a little bit bad about that but we were all scared and nobody, really, knew what to do. Besides the way she was looking at everyone, that guilty glare, was a little uncalled for. It made everyone, totally, uncomfortable. It wasn't like we didn't feel bad enough about things, as it were, but now she had to go and throw her own stuff on top of it all? Bryndis and I began to close the gates on all the other windows, because we couldn't expect the glass to hold forever, and even then the gates would probably fail, at some point. But Trix just walks on the other side of the windows, mirroring us as we slam the gates closed, window by window, pleading with us to open up...or, at least, pass her keys through the mail slot, so she can get into her car. I think...that's reasonable, so I walk to her purse and begin fumbling around for them.
From behind me I can hear everyone gasp. Some Zombie dude has a hold of Trix's hair and is pulling her back. But, she has a good hold on the door handle and is refusing to let go. You can see the muscles in her forearms bulging and, quit honestly, I'm impressed. She's stronger than her little, lithe, frame would suggest. Quickly I run to the door, her keys in my hand, and I drop them through the mail slot, to where her feet would be, were they not in the hands of two other Zombies that have joined the struggle. Now, she looks like Supergirl, flying at the door, her feet up in the air and a whole herd of them, now, pulling her up, up, and away. She looks, quickly at the keys on the cement and then at me, then she's gone, pulled into the throng of Dead that are moaning away and pulling at her.
Then she's gone.
We all take a sigh of relief. It was way too uncomfortable a situation. You'd think that, in an Apocalypse, that you be warmed up to a scenario, like that, instead of just thrown head over fucking heals, like that.
Selma, our tailor, walks out from the back. "I closed the back door but I think someone there, in bathroom. Loud noises." By the way, I'm not being racist here, when she's stressed, her English goes downhill, and fast.
So the rest of us walk toward the back and now, we're trying to figure out what to do. It's been a few hours so, whoever's in there, isn't smart enough to open the door. It could only be a Zombie. WTF.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)