Dark Recollections Read online

  Teen sex stories notwithstanding, when I cleared the place I had a substantial problem. It was the last dorm I had to clear, and it was just getting dark at the time. The darkness alone was giving me the heebie-jeebies. If I didn’t keep my head on a swivel at all times outdoors, it was really easy for them to get alarmingly close. I’d shot two zombies that’d gotten to within 15 feet of me earlier. Far too close for comfort. With it getting dark, my vision would be shittier, and I was starting to feel real vulnerable.

  I’m guessing it was maybe 8pm? Don’t remember for sure, and it doesn’t really matter I guess. Anyway, after the Hall B bullshit I was a little worried about more blocked off doors, so I made extra sure to check the upstairs windows as well as the downstairs. Just like Hall B I couldn’t see anything in any of the windows. I let myself in the front door the same way, but this time the shit hit the fan immediately.

  When I opened the door, there were bodies all over the place. I think later on I counted eight in the pile, and they were not all dead. The door stuck half open and one of the bodies right there latched onto the side of the door right at my feet, and sort of pulled itself right onto my lower legs. The damn thing’s weight kind of chop blocked me and I tumbled backwards off the couple steps and planted hard on my ass. Mind you, this is the day after I smashed my back against a wall when my mother tried to kill me, and this was only maybe 10 hours removed from trying to sleep on the frigging admissions roof. I was sore to begin with, and landing right on my tailbone was insult and injury.

  I mean if I want to enhance positives, the fall backwards sent me feet away from the prone zombie that was a split second away from biting my calf. In retrospect, a busted asshole is better than being dead I guess. I remember yelling out in pain, swearing a blue streak for a second, then shooting the fucking thing in the head as it crawled down the steps at me.

  By then a handful of the zombies that were on the floor had either gotten to their feet, or were crawling through the door that was ajar. From my back, as calmly as I could muster, I started shooting them down. I am pleased to announce to you Mr. Journal that zombies are not courteous folk anymore. They NEVER hold the door for their friends, which helped me substantially. I think three of them got out the door before it slammed shut behind them, and those three got dropped pretty easily.

  I think it’s worth mentioning that panic kills. I know it’s hard to imagine trying to stay calm when you’re on your back and three zombies are ten feet away, but really, if you just separate the horror from the reality of what you need to do, you find yourself not panicking nearly as much. I cleared my head, and kept telling myself shoot first. Move away after. If they’re dead they can’t kill you, if you crawl away, and they’re faster, they’ll catch you. Simple stuff really, it just escapes people in times of great anxiety. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get PTSD from my tour in Iraq? Dunno.

  So four zombies came out the door, and four zombies got shot. I inspected the bodies quick, and it looked like three of the boy students, and either one parent, or a staff member I didn’t know. At that point I didn’t know how many were still inside, so before I opened the door, I got around the side of the house all sneaky like, and looked in the side windows. Through the curtains I could see a couple more standing, and a couple more scratching at the door from the floor.

  Continuing stealth mode, I moved to the back of the house, and let myself in the door at the kitchen. I switched off to the shotgun as well, and slowly crept inside. The only way to get an angle on the front door was to walk through the kitchen, into the dining room, and look to the right into the entrance foyer where they were. I crept in, and peeked into the dining room just far enough to see the back of the first zombie. Once I had him dead to rights I started shooting. He got one in the back of the grape, and I took a few slow steps to the side. As soon as I moved the other standing zombie was climbing over the form of the one I’d just shot to get at me. Luckily the body that had gone down fell right at the feet of the second one, buying me time. I popped the second one’s head apart with some double ought. The two crawling zombies were such a mess I took them out with the sword pretty easily.

  I cleared the rest of the hall and found zilch for danger. Once that was done I had basically cleared everything but the staff houses, and the athletic fields which were a fair distance away, and with all the killing of zombies I’d done that day, I felt pretty safe.

  I went back to my car, moved it as close to Hall E as I could, and got Otis out of the staff office building where I’d put him earlier. It was the same building I found Abby in earlier that day. Poor Otis was so frigging out of sorts from all the bullshit he just clung to me like Velcro as soon as we got into here that night. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I just remember waking up in the room I slept in, still sore as hell, and trying to piece together if all of what had happened was a dream or not.

  So surreal the first few weeks. It’s like when you start school, or start a new job, there’s this period where you are still kind of in disbelief that this is the new reality you have. Holy shit! I’m in High School! Or wow, I finally got the job I wanted all this time. Except this was more of a “oh dear, the world has come crashing down around me and I’ve lost almost everything I’ve ever held dear.”

  Hopefully you get the point Mr. Journal.

  That’s the bulk of the clearing of campus. Some other crap happened the next few days as I found more stragglers wandering about, and when I searched through the staff housing, but the majority of that is point, click, delete bullshit. Slow moving zombies that I keep my distance from. They get shot from said distance, and I move on to the next target.

  Hands are finally getting tired from typing tonight, and I’m pretty wiped from the work around campus too. Otis is intently staring at me from the living room floor in front of me as well. It’s bedtime. Otis says so.

  Tomorrow I start clearing out surrounding houses.

  -Adrian

  November 20th

  Picture in your mind a crucifix. A very tall crucifix with fairly long arms. At the base of the crucifix there is a bend to the left side. Almost like a small hook.

  That’s like the road that the school is on. The bridge is at the very top of the crucifix, and the road ends at the bottom of the hook, at very bottom. This is Auburn Lake Road. The stop sign at the bottom of the hook is the one near the gas station I’ve been to twice. The two arms of the crucifix are roads that go off from the road that leads to campus. My plan for clearing the houses started with me clearing the arms of the crucifix first. If you were to leave campus via car, Jones Road is to the left, heading up a slight hill, and Prospect Circle is the road to the right.

  I did some recon this morning in the Tundra and discovered a few things about my ‘hood, and the work that would be required to clear it. Jones Road terminates at a large farm and has 9 houses on it. All are larger houses, set back from the road, with long driveways, garages, and would be considered “upscale.” Prospect Circle is not actually a circle. You can clearly see that a developer fully intended to make a cul-de-sac, but it was never completed. It’s more a wide curve that has an abrupt dirt end with some boulders piled up. Prospect Circle has 7 houses on it, and they look like they were stamped out of a mold. There are two designs, both bland, and it looks like the beginning of a cloned suburban hell.

  Auburn Lake Road is 3.9 miles long from the bridge to the stop sign at the end of it. There are 14 houses staggered randomly along the road. They come in various styles and sizes but most are on the larger side, and tend to be farm houses, or colonials. There is one gambrel style home, which I was always partial to when I drove home from work each day. It just looked homey to me.

  State Route 18 was the road that the stop sign was at. It’s also the road the gas station is on, and is the same road I saw the young couple with the little kid on. It’s a fairly minor state route, really just a road, but whatever. Names hardly matter now. Clustered around the stop sign and the gas station the
re are 15 homes within about a hundred and fifty yards.

  My plan intended on clearing the houses all the way down to the gas station as well as the bunch of houses right there. If you attended 3rd grade math you have probably realized that is a grand total of 45 homes. Geez Louise, that’s a shitload of real estate. So the real plan then becomes where do I start, and in which direction do I move? During my drive to count homes and whatnot I came to the conclusion I would start at the gas station area on Route 18, and move up Auburn Lake Road back to campus.

  This makes the most sense to me right now because I will be creating noise, and if the noise attracts zombies I would rather attract them to areas further away from campus if possible. How far does the sound of a gunshot travel? This will tell me if you think about it. I kill the zombies at the gas station, and draw in all the zombies that heard the gunshot to that area. I kill them. Theoretically I will then have killed all the zombies in earshot, thus creating a large buffer zone around the school. After all those zombies are dead, the only ones I really should have to worry about are the ones that are drawn into the area by errant noises, wildlife movement, or say if a car drives down Route 18 and drags some zombies behind them.

  What do you think Mr. Journal? Solid logic and reasoning? I guess your opinion doesn’t matter because I already started. I know, I know. You’re offended I didn’t come to you first and check for your opinion. Relax, take a chill pill. What’s done is done, and we cannot lament what we cannot change.

  Jesus I should take my own advice. I could totally get on Oprah with that bullshit. You know that’s a totally random question. Is Oprah still alive? Broadcasting from some nuclear bunker about her book club? I bet she is. If I was Oprah-rich I would be too. I mean I wouldn’t be broadcasting from my nuclear bunker about Oprah’s book club. I’d be talking about something entirely different. Like video games, or maybe the pros and cons of breast augmentation. Natural, versus enhanced? Food for thought Mr. Journal.

  You know that makes a lot of sense the more I think about it. I bet she started all this in her final phase of global domination. In six months she and an army of production assistants from her show will come out of this massive vault in Illinois somewhere with a magical vaccine that fixes everything. The world will bow down to Harpo Productions and we will be forced to build shrines in her visage on our living room mantles.

  Now that’s a truly horrific scenario Mr. Journal. And that’s coming from a guy who shot his mom because she was trying to eat him. Demented shit.

  Back to the story at hand here. I forgot to mention earlier in this entry that I checked my enormous funeral pyre yesterday morning and as expected, there was still a gigantor pile of dead bodies smoldering near staff housing. I spent most of yesterday digging out decent, dry wood and getting the fire going again. I took a big risk and started the burn during dusk, but I’m fairly sure the smoke wasn’t visible in the sky. Today when I checked the pile again there was almost nothing left. I shoveled it up into the dump truck, brought it down the road far away from the lake and buried it in an old crumbling house foundation. Problem solved. (knock on wood)

  That was most of yesterday. When I was done doing that I was exhausted, so I fired up the generator, kicked back in my recliner with Otis, and watched a DVD. I actually fell asleep in the recliner with Otis on my chest, which was actually kind of cool. What DVD you ask? I’m happy to hear you’re interested in my movies tastes. All I have here at the moment is whatever the kids had, or whatever staff had here. Selection is limited. However, I was pleased to find one of the dorkier kids in Hall C had a plethora of movies in my bailiwick, and last night I watched Office Space. Love that movie. Sameer.. Niya.... neeya….. not gonna work here anymore. Lol. Love Mike Judge.

  Clearing houses. Right. Alright so in my brain I’ve been exhausting small details of the clearing of these houses for days now. Shoveling dead bodies.. I’m planning ahead. Lifting concrete blocks.. I’m planning ahead. I’m rubbing one out.. I’m planning ahead. You get the idea.

  I’m using the Tundra. It’s more agile than the dump truck and I just like it. I figure I will bring the shotgun, the .22, and the Sig. I have my hunting vest on over Dr. Potter’s winter jacket. I am a little warm that way, but the coat is pretty heavy duty and it should help if I am bitten. Fuck the fleece jacket for now.

  Pants-wise I am opting for cargo pocketed khakis. I’ve got a semi-professional first aid kit set up in a pocket, should I get hurt, and I am wearing my boots. As luck would have it, one of the kids had an enormous head like me, and also happened to keep his High School football helmet. I am bringing it with me in the event I feel like I need a helmet. I don’t like the way my hearing is muffled wearing it though, so I’m hoping I don’t need to be an honorary member of the Greenfield Spartans, class of ’08.

  I am fully ammo’d up on these runs as well as wearing my short sword. I think that’s pretty good. In the truck I have a full first aid kit, as well as a few gallons of water, and some food so I don’t have to drive back here if I don’t need to.

  I started with the house that was furthest from the gas station. I am being very careful to announce my presence to anyone inside the houses before I attempt to enter them. My great worry is someone hiding inside will see me trying to break in and they will attack me or shoot me. I did three houses today, and all went exactly the same.

  Pull into driveway, honk horn repeatedly. Exit vehicle without shotgun or rifle drawn to illustrate my non violent intentions. Make a grand showing of myself and holler in that I am here to help them if they need it. If they do not want help, open a window and tell me so. I do this for 5 minutes. After that, I assume the house is unoccupied by the living, I get the .22, and clear the surrounding area. I check all entrances, outlying sheds, barns, garages, etc. I also check in all the windows to see if anything is moving inside. The first house I checked was completely empty of living, dead, and undead, which was a nice start.

  Pictures on the walls showed an older couple with two teenage kids, and the bedrooms confirmed that. They had a boatload of good food. The house smelled awful though, especially after I opened the fridge. Big mistake there. No more checking in fridges. The rotting, moldy food inside was almost acidic in smell and I shut it as fast I could. It was so vinegary and nasty my eyes actually watered for a few minutes.

  The second house I cleared was a little smaller than the first. One floor ranch with a two car attached garage. No cars in either yards by the way. Honked, hollered, checked the yard, found nothing dangerous. I did find a dog chained in the backyard though that had clearly died from starvation. That really hit a nerve with me. I started to think about how many pets were left behind just like that. There must be millions of dead animals that starved to death, or died of dehydration out there after their owners died. God that makes so frigging sad. Just imagining it makes me half angry, and half heart-broken.

  The shed had a bag of concrete, which was awesome, and I could see some movement through the bay window in front of the house. I’m loathe to break windows now so I didn’t shoot the zombie I saw standing inside. It was an older man that looked like a suicide, or perhaps a stroke or something. He didn’t look bitten or anything, so I just made an assumption. Maybe he starved like his dog.

  I backed the Tundra up on the lawn right in front of the bay window and laughed as he continued to try and climb through his window. He kept falling down on the couch that was against it, getting up, trying again, and falling again. It’s like that Greek dude who keeps pushing the rock up the hill over and over. Zombies and their never ending journey for meat.

  I turned on the stereo in the truck and blasted a CD. My selection for this house was a Pat Benatar CD that the previous owner had in there. Not really my bag, but the music wasn’t really for me anyway. I made a big show to the dead guy inside of walking right up to the window, then lowering myself out of sight so he couldn’t see me slip around the back of the house. I snuck a peek through a side window to make sure h
e was still going at the truck, and once I saw he was, I went around back and tried the door. Mercifully it was unlocked. I slipped inside, found my way through the house, and popped him once in the head from behind.. I was sort of pissed though, because the frigging bullet went through his head and broke the damn window, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Oh well. Guess he’ll have to file a claim on his homeowners insurance.

  The house had one hallway leading off the living room and as I started down it another zombie came out of one of the rooms. It was an older lady who was butt ass naked. Her arms were ripped open from what looked like self inflicted wounds. Just gaping rents running from wrist to elbow. I shuddered a bit, backed up a few steps, and shot her twice. First bullet hit her in the head but didn’t kill for some reason. Small brain? Thick skull? Who knows? I’ve seen people shot with AK-47’s that hopped up after like it was a bee sting. The world is filled with weirdness.

  Turns out she had come out of the bathroom, and when I went in there the tub was half filled with coagulated blood. My guess is she took a bath, slashed her wrists, and that was it. Another sad story that doesn’t fucking matter. I dragged their bodies out into their yard near the dog’s body, killed the Pat Benatar soundtrack, and went back inside to scavenge their shit. Not nearly as much worth taking, but still good stuff. Lots of Spam. Don’t laugh Mr. Journal. It’s a refined and classy meal when the world has fallen apart.

  Third house was larger, and was totally empty like the first. This house belonged to a fairly good sized family, and it was pretty well stocked. I was really pleased with the haul of just food crap I got out of it. I think I added maybe 20% to my existing food supplies just from these three houses. Very exciting. Not too dangerous either. There was a note on the kitchen table that was written hastily that explained that the family had gone to their in laws up north, and that anyone looking for them should go there.