Dark Recollections Page 16

  Mr. Journal, or whoeverr the fuck is reading this after I die, if they still have music wherever you are, stop reading this and go listen to the song ‘nothin on you’ by B.o.B. And like, really frigging listen to it. Don’t mail it in. Don’t take long though. I might not be here when you get back.

  Do you understand now? Are you crying as hard as I am yet? Do you understand why I sit here every night and think about that one thing I didn’t do? My greatest sin, my greatest failure. You can’t understand. You never will. I’ll never be able to find the words to describe how empty and little I feel. I miss her so much it’s like all the air is gone from my world when I think of her.

  I’ve had that song on repeat on my laptop for like 3 hours now. I’ve been doubled over here in the kitchen, face in my hands, unable to stop the tears. I am a broken man tonight, and all the King’s men can go fuck themselves. I don’t think there’s any way to put Adrian M. Ring back together.

  What the fuck is my purpose here? I am alive, but what for? If I died right fucking now not one soul would miss me, or even know it. If I took that .45 I just got, and kissed the barrel, and squeezed the trigger, every single problem would just vanish, right? They say suicide isn’t the solution, and that all it does is hurt the ones you love.

  The thing is… the only ones I love are already dead. Or they already think I’m dead, so what fucking difference does it make if I kill myself? I already shot my mother. My dad died years ago. I have no idea where my brothers or sister are, and I abandoned my girlfriend to a fate that’s so horrible I can’t even think about it without losing my mind. There’s no one left for me to hurt.

  The only things that are keeping me from painting the ceiling of this kitchen with my fucking brains are my cat, and the fear that if I do kill myself, and there is an afterlife, I’d be fucking myself over. I can’t even deal with the thought of leaving poor Otis to fend for himself and there’s no fucking way I can kill him before I do myself. And my mother’s Catholic upbringing has me convinced that if I do eat a bullet I rot in Hell, and that wouldn’t be much better than this at all. Although at least in Hell I might get the feeling I’m finally paying for my sins. I think they call that closure.

  So what are my choices really? Sit here for the rest of my so called life, however long that is, all alone, with my cat? I can grow my food, maybe shoot a deer or a turkey here and there, and what? Write to you Mr. Journal in the hopes that when and if they find this laptop someone will give enough of a shit that they’ll look at the “my diary” folder? That’s not worth living for. Not a life worth living at all.

  I’m a fucking scavenger. I am a human vulture, picking at the remains of the tattered corpse of society. I break into people’s houses, steal from the dead, and return to my fucking cave here up on the mountain.

  My kingdom of ashes.

  Lord Adrian Ring, King Shit of Turd Mountain. All hail the King.

  Fuck my life. God my head is killing me. Cheap beer always does this to me. I should’ve left it at the goddamn gas station. I usually try and drink the good shit, the microbrew stuff. I guess it’s nothing but shit for the King of Turd Mountain now my friends. Sigh.

  What are my choices? REALLY?

  Stay here alone? Leave alone? Bring others here? Try to find more people and join them elsewhere? Purge the town, county, state, and nation of the undead? I’m struggling enough with keeping one gas generator powered and one private school campus clear, let alone the whole fucking town. Sigh.

  I need to make amends to make my life livable. I need purpose to survive. My own survival is not purpose enough to survive this way. I’ll eventually have a night where I’m so sad, so lonely, and so scared of waking up alone again that I WILL kill myself. I know it. I can feel my sanity slipping away more and more, and my fear of spending eternity in Hell is starting to feel less scary than living my life like this.

  I can’t rescue Cassie. I just can’t. She’s either safe, or dead, and either way I can’t change those situations. My sin is complete with her. I cannot dwell on what I cannot change. I can only seek to make amends for my greatest mistake, or I can visit justice on myself for it. Justice to me means my death, and like I said, I really don’t want to leave Otis alone. He’s too stupid and loveable to make it long. He’ll rub up against a zombie the first day I’m gone and get eaten. I can already see it.

  So that leaves making amends. That means I need to live my life to the best of my ability, and it means I do things in her honor, to celebrate my love for her, and to remind myself of how lucky I was to have her in my life for as long as I did. It also means I need to help others. Helping just myself is far too self serving to give me closure on this.

  I need to help other people. That young couple at the gas station the other day would’ve been a good start too. I did help them though, really. I can’t help it if the woman got greedy, and things went down the way they did. That’s not on me. I didn’t pull that trigger.

  Alright Mr. Journal. Today is the day. Tonight is the night. I will sleep off my beer, and tomorrow I will suffer through the hangover that I deserve and know is waiting for me there, and the next day I start planning out how I will survive.

  Not just staying alive.

  How I plan on SURVIVING.

  -Adrian

  November 15th

  I hope today is a better day. I can say with some certainty that my head no longer feels like it is filled with braying, kicking donkeys. At the very least that’s better than yesterday.

  I’ve begun to plan my future. Such as it is. I actually think getting hammered the other day did me some good. I think I’ve been in denial this whole time, and the alcohol made me come to terms at least somewhat with it. Talking to you Mr. Journal has also helped a lot. Once I got my shit together yesterday I sat down and started to sketch out a plan that allowed me to help people.

  But, my plan also needed to maintain my own safety. In the interest of taking my sweet ass time and getting it right, I’m going to wait another day or two to fully lay out the plan here. I can say so far, I’m feeling like a pretty intelligent guy. I just hope I’ve thought of either everything, or enough to keep safe and actually make things better, as opposed to making things worse. I’ve done a lot of both it seems recently.

  I’m feeling motivated to talk about things though, and if I’m not ready to share my plan just yet, I should continue to recount how everything got to where it is now. I know I was talking at length about how I cleared the campus and made it “safe” so I think I’ll finish that story. There’s still a fair amount of that to talk about.

  Rest assured though Mr. Journal. I’ll share my plan in a day or two. Just a few more kinks to work out.

  Okay then…. clearing the campus. Lemme look back and see where I left off.

  Right. I had just gotten done killing all the zombies from my sniping position in Dr. Potter’s classroom. I had seen from the classroom earlier in the day that there were zombies banging on the back entrance to one of the staff office buildings. If you can imagine the campus in your head, you come across the bridge, and almost immediately to your left is the staff building, and across the street from that is admissions. The main classroom area is maybe 70-80 yards down the road from them.

  The back entrance I was talking about would be on the far side of the staff building from the admissions side. Make sense? It’s the door away from the bridge. There are a few trees and a lawn area in that space, so it’s mostly open. I remember pulling Dr. Potter’s desk out of the way, and unblocking the door after I packed my stuff up. I slung the .22 and opted for the shotgun for the moment.

  I got down through the main school building with no issues. There were bodies all over the upper hallway from when I’d shot my way in earlier, and they were starting to give off that pungent rotting smell already. I thought it was a little early for that, but I’m not a coroner.

  Looking through the glass doors I could see a single zombie that had shuffled into the campus street
likely from behind the school building. I sat the shotgun down, poked the barrel through the jam of the glass door after cracking it an inch or two, and popped it in the head once. One reason the .22 is so effective for doing this kinda stuff is the lack of recoil. It’s easy to aim, and there’s no muzzle lift. If you miss, it’s easy to pop off a second shot. Plus the .22 round frequently won’t exit the skull. It just rattles around inside like a supersonic pinball. Scrambles the grey matter so to speak.

  I felt the .22 was better, so I reloaded, and slung the shotgun. I changed my mind about checking the staff office first, and headed over to admissions to make sure the building was actually devoid of undead. On my way out I checked the zombie I just shot, and realized it was one of my favorite students. Kid named Pete. Tall, kinda goofy, but super witty. He was the awkward kid that you just knew would be fine once they got out of the social clusterfuck that high school was. Sad.

  I moved across the campus with the .22 shouldered, doing the combat walk. All movement is from the knees down. Hips stay flat, shoulders square, weapon steady. Moving like that allows for faster target acquisition. I saw nothing and made it to admissions fine. I had to wade through bodies to get there though. I didn’t count, but there had to be 40 or 50. They were everywhere. Students, staff, parents, maintenance people, folks that were totally random and unrecognizable… Just awful.

  I checked through the windows and saw movement, so I switched off to the shotgun, and headed inside slowly. Lobby was clear, offices were clear, but at the door that led to the office where the Gaga CD had been blaring, there were still two zombies, slowly, absently banging at the door. One was a student, a little freshman that as I recalled was deep in the throes of puberty just last week, covered in pimples, and the other one was one of the athletics coaches, still wearing his school sweat suit. Probably came from gym class before all this happened.

  I sat the shotgun down, drew the sword, and slinked down the hallway as silently as I could. Once I got to within an arm’s reach, I stabbed the gym teacher in the back of the head as hard as I could. The sword lodged in something hard and went down with him as he slumped dead to his knees. I had to let the sword go unfortunately, as I didn’t want to risk struggling to get it out with the kid zombie right there. The kid spun pretty quickly and started at me, but I took a few quick steps back, drew the Sig, and put two in his head. First shot was enough though. The second just put a furrow in his scalp as he collapsed. Once everything was clear and quiet, I wrenched the sword free from the head of the gym teacher. I cleaned it good on his school shirt, and put it away.

  After that I moved the curtain on the floor, shut the admissions door, and decided I’d check the staff building. I had my keys, so getting in wouldn’t be a problem. My only worry was what I was going to find inside.

  I crept across the road with the .22 up again. I didn’t see anything, so I went to the front entrance that basically faces the admissions building. It was a heavy duty wooden door, oak I think, and it was locked. I unlocked it with my key and cracked it open. Pushed up against the door was a giant pile of furniture. A desk, a bookshelf, a few rolling office chairs…. I think there was a potted plant and maybe a sink as well. Point is there was an enormous pile of shit put there. I laughed out loud and hollered in that it was me.

  I propped the door open with the rock that was beside the door for that purpose, and hollered a few more times. Eventually I heard some faint yelling coming from the upstairs offices. I couldn’t make shit out, so I hollered I was coming in, and kicked in their makeshift barricade. Eventually I had to climb over the desk, and I shut the door behind me.

  I cleared the bottom floor quickly, which was easy, as it was basically two large office style rooms with low cubicles. There was a bathroom as well, but the door was open. When I came back around to the stairs in the main hall, I nearly shot a young girl coming down the steps. She had snuck down and came around the corner just as I did, and I damn near squeezed off a shot right in her face. Holy crap I remember nearly pissing my pants. She went pale frigging white and screamed bloody murder when she saw me point the weapon at her.

  Luckily, I checked my trigger finger just in time and just scared the daylights out of her. The girl sat on the steps once she calmed some and we talked for a few minutes. I didn’t recognize her at first, as she was all messed up and covered in weirdness. Blood streaks on her face, messed up hair, clothes all screwed up, dirty. She was a mess. I recognized her as Abigail Williams. She was a fairly mousy blonde senior who was pretty damn smart as I recalled. She was wearing a fairly simple outfit that day too. Simple t-shirt from MC-Chris, and some jeans. Sadly, her shirt was all messed up and her bra was showing through. I cried a lot for her. She didn’t have much to show. I know, sad Mr. Journal. At least she was alive.

  As I recall Abby was in the campus center when one of the parents coming to get their kid drove in. As she said, they were, “driving out of their fricking minds Mr. Ring,” and lost control. That was the car that I saw the day prior that was lodged into the side of the one of the buildings. Apparently things spiraled out of control pretty rapidly after that. The driver died, shortly came back, and started a minor rampage around campus before someone killed him. Abby thought it was death via bat, or perhaps an oar from one of the school canoes nearby.

  She guessed that the driver bit maybe two or three people before being killed, and as you can imagine, that started the cycle. Now mind you when I arrived on campus, it was long after that had happened, and I hadn’t seen any zombies at that point. Which meant…. Those people bitten were still here somewhere. Abby herself had watched the crash, saw them die, then come back, then bite the people trying to rescue them. A demented biting the hand that feeds you sort of thing. Fucking weird world we live in now. I wonder to myself now how many paramedics and first responders were the first people to get bit. They’re bit all the time by crazy people, and I’m sure a lot of them got bit that day, and wound up succumbing because of it. Food for thought.

  Fortunately for her she panicked, and ran in there. From what she said, the fresh zombies followed other people on campus away from her, and were likely now inside other buildings. More zombies to kill I guess. When the staff hiding in here with her had enough, they left her alone. She barricaded the door, and locked herself in an office upstairs. She stayed there all night the night prior, and was waiting for whoever was shooting to come help her.

  Not bad for a 17 year old kid.

  She was hungry, but otherwise, unharmed, and remarkably still sane after all that. She said she actually felt much better when she heard me shooting earlier, which made me feel good. She said she knew people were here helping when the rifle started firing. For the meantime though, I had to figure out what she wanted to do, and get done what I needed to get done.

  I still had an energy bar on me, so I tossed it her way, and she ate it like it was a gourmet meal. I still remember the look on her face as she savored every bite. Too funny how hunger can change your standards on food. I think she would’ve mowed down a cardboard box at that moment if someone gave her some salt to sprinkle on it. Once she was done I laid it out for her. My plan, not my cock you pervert. Mr. Journal the gall you have…

  Heh. I told her that I was going to clean out the school campus, one building at a time if I had to. I was going to make it safe to live in, and that she was more than welcome to help, or to sit still and stay here until I was done. She considered it for a few minutes while I pissed and shit finally, but when I came back she declined. She wanted to head back home and find her parents. She said they lived an hour away or so, due west from here. She couldn’t live without finding out if they were okay, and I totally understood. I totally disagreed with her though. Young girl leaving all alone with the world the way it was seemed pretty fucking dumb to me, but she was old enough, I didn’t want the baggage. Speaking of pissing and shitting, do you find it irritating Mr. Journal when you pee standing, then just as you flush and start to leave, you ha
ve to poop? Drives me nuts. I mean seriously.

  We chatted for a bit, I told her the basics of what I knew, and we exited via the front door. Just outside 25 feet away there was an undead student milling about. It probably heard us moving the barricade aside as we were leaving, or was drawn to the sound of the gunshots earlier. He immediately snapped to attention when we walked out, and started striding at us. I handed the .22 to her, and drew the sword.

  The fresh ones are always more dangerous. They’re a little quicker, and I think they’re almost a little smarter. They are still pretty slow, really dumb, and I took him down. I made an example of him to her while she watched.

  I walked at him and dropped low and to the side, swinging the sword at knee level. The force of the blade sent it right through the gristle at the knee and lopped his leg clean off. With little balance anyway, the dead kid face planted. I circled him, watching her horror as he rolled around trying to get at me. It hurt to be so cruel, but she had to see here what would be everywhere out there. Eventually the zombie got on his stomach. I stopped moving, and allowed it to come straight at me. Once it was close enough, I swung down hard, and cleaved his head in two. Once again the sword lodged firmly, and I had to pull it out holding his head still with my foot.

  She threw up and dropped the .22.

  I calmly explained how only destroying the brain would kill them. I told her about fuel, food, water, and safety. I told her to go straight home, and find her parents. Then come straight back if they didn’t have a better plan.

  We picked out a car on the side of the street that had keys in it still, and she got in. I wished her good luck, told her to be safe and smart, and she drove out.

  She never came back. I guess they had a better plan.