We sat down with the girls to watch a DVD. While we were going through the selection of movies I found a copy of Night of the Living Dead. I promptly took it outside and shot it to pieces.
DAY 63
This morning we sat down and discussed our options in the event that we have to leave this place
.
I would still like to go north at some point, but do not feel the same urgency I felt a few days ago. We are safe and comfortable here, but this is no way to live. San Francisco is full of the undead. You can’t throw a rock in any direction without hitting one. Even though they can’t get inside, every time we venture outside we put ourselves at great risk.
We decided to continue looking for a suitable boat. In the meantime, we are going to try to find another vehicle. The Humvee is a diesel and though there is a good amount of fuel for it in the garage, if we go on the road, it could pose a problem for us.
Two gas engine vehicles make more sense. We had seen a Ford Expedition several blocks away and Albert and I took out the Rover to go retrieve it.
The street the Ford was parked on looked deserted. The vehicle itself looked to be in good shape. Of course it was locked, but we managed to pry open the back lift window and I crawled to the front and plugged in the emergency battery charger. After a minute of charging the vehicle’s alarm went off. Albert got under the hood and took care of it, but not before a horde of creatures came running out of the buildings after us.
They descended on the Expedition and began pounding on it, trying to get to us. There was no time for subtlety so I quickly jammed a screwdriver into the steering column and broke the steering wheel lock. I then jammed the screwdriver into the ignition slot and hammered it in. I turned the screwdriver and the starter protested. The engine turned and turned and then caught. I didn’t wait for it to warm up, but instead put the vehicle in gear and pulled away.
We drove a half-mile and then circled back to pick up the Rover. I accidently hit a plague victim on the way. The creature bounced off the grill and slid down the street a few feet. Just as I started to feel a little guilty, it jumped up and chased us down the road. We managed to get Albert back to the Land Rover without further incident.
We now have both of our new SUVs parked in the garage. We will use the Hummer for exploring the local marinas and other “errands.” Alison and Grace did an inventory of our edible supplies and reported that we have about a three-week supply of food for the four of us. We are going to have to start looking for more soon.
DAY 64
Early this morning I woke from a nightmare about Karl.
In my dream, he was stomping around upstairs in his apartment looking for me. The Karl in my dream was riddled with bullet holes and missing his eye. When I woke up I couldn’t tell if my dream had been real or not. I was sweating and had the shakes.
I listened to the ceiling above me for a while. I could swear I heard movement from the apartment upstairs. I got up, got dressed, and armed myself with my CAR-15. I slipped out into the hallway and padded quietly up the stairs to Karl’s old home. I was nervous and shaky. I psyched myself at his front door and then twisted on my weapon-mounted light and went through the door fast, stepping to the left as soon as I cleared the doorway.
I played the light around the cold, dead apartment. The wind was blowing through the broken front window and fluttering the curtains out. The metal curtain rod banged against the wall every time the curtains moved. My heart pounded in my chest as I cleared the suite room by room. Nothing. I went out onto the deck off the dining room and shined my light down into the garden below. I could just make out the rolled up bulk of Karl amongst the flowers.
I relaxed and went back downstairs. As I walked down the hall toward my room I heard something coming from Alison’s room. I stopped and listened at her door. I could hear her crying. I knocked softly on her door and opened it up. It was dark inside. Just as I was about to turn on my flashlight, Alison struck a match and lit the candle next to her bed.
I sat down on her bed and we talked. It turns out she has been very lonely and depressed about our situation. She hates San Francisco and wishes that we had never stopped here. We talked for over an hour and then she asked me to just hold her. I took off all my gear and lay down with her.
Before she put out the candle she asked me why I was up and why I was armed to the teeth. When I told her about my dream and the need to check out the apartment upstairs, she laughed. She told me she didn’t think I was afraid of anything. A lot she knows.
Early today we scrounged through the apartments on the first and second floors. For our efforts we now have some dried pastas, six tins of canned meat, more wine than we will ever need, and two pounds of caviar (which none of us will touch, not even Chloe). We did find a local phone book though and discovered that there are two grocery stores nearby. We are all going shopping now.
DAY(S) 65, 66
Once again, our lives have been turned upside down in the span of a heartbeat.
This is the first chance I have had to catch up with this journal. Tonight we are spending the night in a barn somewhere north of a place called Vacaville. We also have two new companions. But before I get ahead of myself, I guess I should back up and fill in what’s happened up until now.
Yesterday morning (it feels like a week ago) we took the Humvee out to go raid a grocery store over in Chinatown. When we got there, we drove up an alley behind the store and parked in the loading area. It was pouring down rain (which helped to cover the sound of our vehicle). While I pried open the back door Albert shot an infected man who crawled out from under a delivery truck parked twenty yards away, and actually hit him on the first try.
We entered the store and cleared it aisle by aisle. There was nobody there. I went back to secure the back door while Albert, Grace, and Alison went shopping. When I walked back through the stock room, I noticed a set of stairs leading up above the store. I climbed them cautiously. At the top was a little apartment with a kitchen, living room, and a bedroom.
The smell of mothballs and rotted flesh assaulted my nostrils. I entered the back bedroom and almost retched at the sight. There was a family of six Asians sitting on the floor about the room, dead. From the decomposed state of their bodies, they had been there for at least a month.
Each of them had a teacup either in their hands, or lying near them. There was a large tea pot on a tray at the end of the bed.
It was pretty obvious what they had done. I shut the door to the bedroom and went back down to join my companions.
We found a lot of dried fruits and meats, as well as several bins of almonds and peanuts. The rest of the food was spoiled or unidentifiable. We took everything we could and loaded it into some fruit boxes we found. The most exciting find there (for me, at least) was a crate of fireworks in the stock room along with two gallon-sized cans of gunpowder. I took the gunpowder.
The trip back home was uneventful, which was unfortunate, as I let my guard down and was totally unprepared for what was waiting for us as we pulled up in front of the apartment building.
I got out to open the gate and failed to notice the two trucks parked across the street. Grace was sitting in the front seat (earlier she had whined until I let her) and noticed the five men get out of their vehicles. She screamed just before they opened up on us with rifles and shotguns. I spun in time to see them taking aim and ducked behind the front hood of the Hummer.
Bullets and buckshot tore through the front windshield and body of the SUV. I was scared but also seriously pissed off. It was Hinckley’s men, I was sure of it. I had my carbine on me and stepped out and returned fire after their first volley of gunfire subsided. I walked toward them, firing as fast as I could pull the trigger. One of them fell back against his truck and another dropped his weapon on the street and limped around behind his vehicle as fast as he could.
I unloaded twenty-nine rounds in less than fifteen seconds and kept walking toward them as I reloaded. I burned through my second magazine just as quickly. By the time I had loaded my third magazine, Albert and Alison entered into the fray and began firing at Hinckley’s men as well.
The only sounds were the silenced whaps of our weapons discharging, the hail-like noise of our bullets slamming into their vehicles, and the men’s startled yelps as they tried to dodge the incoming barrage of lead. They had not been prepared for someone to actually fight back. The men retrieved their fallen comrade and all of them jumped back in their rigs and sped off.
I could hear the sounds of the undead echoing everywhere throughout the neighborhood. I retrieved the rifle that had been dropped on the street by one of the men and then ran to open the gate, almost slipping on the rain-soaked pavement. Albert drove the Hummer straight down into the garage as I secured the gate. Several dozen Infected slammed themselves against the fence, reaching through it for me. I backed away with my weapon at the ready.
I ducked under the garage door just as Alison pulled it closed. I yanked open the passenger seat and tore off Grace’s seatbelt. I pulled her out of the Hummer and examined her frantically. I was terrified that she might have been hit by a stray bullet. She was in shock, but unharmed.
She began crying (I was surprised she had waited so long to start). I held her tightly, telling her she was OK. Alison and Albert were as furious as I was.
We were all uninjured, but the Hummer was trashed. The front left tire was flat and three windows, including the front windshield were shot out. I cringed when I thought about how much .223 ammunition I had wasted with my “shock and awe” campaign against our attackers.
We all stood in the dark garage, with me holding Grace, and realized that we couldn’t stay here anymore. Hinckley’s men knew where we lived and would be back. Not to mention there were probably a hundred plague victims gathered in front of our complex that had nowhere else to be.
I handed Grace off to Alison, and Albert and I raced upstairs to start packing. When we entered the apartment, Chloe jumped all over us, nervous from all the recent commotion. I didn’t have time for her bullshit so I tossed her in the bedroom while we hauled everything downstairs, making a mental note to myself not to forget her when we left.
We were fortunate that we had just moved everything once already and most of it was still in boxes. We were even luckier that we had just gotten the Expedition.
It took us the rest of the morning to get everything we needed into the two SUVs. There were a lot of things we had to leave behind, but everything we could eat, drink, or shoot got priority. Alison and Grace kept a lookout for us from the third-floor balcony. Alison radioed me at one point and said that she counted over sixty creatures pounding on the walls and gate outside.
With no idea when Hinckley and his people would return, we couldn’t afford to stay in San Francisco one more night.
At a little after 2 p.m. we opened the garage and pulled the Rover and Expedition into the courtyard. I had prepared several Molotov cocktails using four wine bottles, gasoline with laundry soap flakes mixed in, and torn towels for fuses. I lit them and threw them through the fence at the undead. The bottles shattered and spread napalm flames all over the Infected.
The creatures at the back of the crowd seemed to have an aversion to fire and backed away from their burning comrades. I waited until the charred monsters staggered away from the gate and then ran up and unhooked the latch, swinging the gates inward.
Several of Them tried to run through the flames to get to me but caught on fire themselves. I jumped into the Ford and we drove through the dancing inferno and then turned south to get out of town. We crossed the Bay Bridge and headed north up interstate 80.
We couldn’t have picked a better time to leave. Another storm was rolling into the bay. The rain and winds buffeted our vehicles as we crossed the Carquinez Bridge. There were abandoned cars all along the interstate. We had to slow down to weave around them.
Somehow, when we left San Francisco, Grace had wound up in the Ford with me (probably to be with Chloe) and Alison and Albert were in the Rover behind us. Every five seconds she came up with a new question to ask me. I answered her patiently just to distract her, as it was better than listening to her hum, sing, whine, or cry (the only other modes she seemed to operate in).
Alison had taught Grace how to use the walkie-talkies while they were keeping lookout on the roof earlier, so when she wasn’t asking me questions, she was radioing Alison and Albert to make sure they were still OK.
Alison finally told Grace that we needed to conserve batteries and that they would check in every hour. That left Grace additional time to focus on asking me more questions. I thought that maybe her singing wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Just north of Vallejo, we ran into the mother of all traffic jams. All five lanes were blocked with bumper to bumper abandoned cars. Across the median there were north bound cars and Semi- trucks jammed in all south bound lanes as well. It looked as if everyone had tried to evacuate north all at once. I stopped and got onto the roof of the Expedition with binoculars to confirm that the sea of automobiles stretched as far north as the eye could see. Thunder rumbled overhead, confirming my feelings of dread.
I got back in the cab, soaked to the bone from the downpour outside. I radioed Albert and told him the news. We had no choice but to put our rigs in four-wheel drive and travel on the grassy areas along the median. Because of all the rains, the ground was muddy and soft. We slogged along for two miles and then came to a road running parallel to the highway. It had abandoned cars on it as well, but we were able to travel next to that road much easier.
As we drove slowly over the uneven terrain, my anxiety mounted. Not only was I worried about getting a flat as well as breaking an axle, but I wondered where all the drivers for these vehicles were. I saw bodies behind the wheels of several cars, and numerous decomposed, eaten bodies along the roadway, but no signs of moving undead. Alison came on the radio and voiced similar concerns.