My Diary of the Apocalypse
So... Called in sick to work this morning.. figured it was better than showing up dead.
That sounded better in my head but, it's been a crazy day so forgive me my rotten jokes. I was woken early this morning by the sound of sirens and the slamming of a car door. The sound rang through the previously silent night. My stepdad had raced back here at the first signs of bad stuff going down and once he explained the situation (well, summed it up anyway) we all leaped into action. He really only needed to say one word "Zombies." My mother went pale and then headed straight upstairs to get my baby sis and some clothes. We grabbed what we could, two of us standing watch with makeshift weapons while the others loaded up two cars, got the animals, and kept Rachel quiet. We began to see stragglers and the chorus of sirens was punctuated at random by frantic screams and the occasional sound of a car crash. It was horrible, but we were focused. I thanked the prescience that lead us to gas up the cars last night.
It's shameful to admit but I'm almost glad that things started to go wrong in the wee hours of morning, if it had gone crazy during rush hour we never would have made it out...
We had an idea even as we left home. We were going to Wal-mart. I was probably a bit pushy but.. it just seemed like the best type of place to hole up. The only problem was finding one that would be the easiest to clear out and defend. Thanks to Rose's plethora of smart-phone apps, we managed to find one that was a little off the beaten track (not totally surrounded by other stores and suburbs) and one that closed at night. The second part was probably most important, the idea of running into 'people of walmart: zombie edition' pretty much terrified me.
We got there in the morning and I realized that our careful yet focused travels had caught the attention of other survivors, we had a bit of a caravan going on. As we pulled our two cars into the lot a half dozen more pulled in too. They put our numbers up to almost 2 dozen along with a handful of dogs and cats. Everyone looks healthy but we all had to be checked out... once we finished scouting/clearing the place and making sure it was secure.
The whole process took time... we ran into a small group of zombies back in the loading dock area but we managed to take care of them. We also found a couple more survivors holed up in the customer service area. Once we'd gone over the place thoroughly most of us pitched in to make it secure. We used whatever we could find in order to block up glass walls and windows and locked up all the outside doors. The store's still on regular power right now but we shut down a lot of the lights in order to keep a lower profile. The roof is fairly easy to get to from inside and it's flat, even has a couple small shacks (we checked them out, they're clear) to use for storage. We moved a bunch of soil, fertilizer, pots, tools, plants and seeds up there ( we had to block off the actual garden center... just too big and open to protect.) Figure, if things stay bad, we can grow some green stuff up there so we don't all get sick...
We were all pretty exhausted after the afternoon's work but we kept sentries posted as well as watchers near the front and back of the store. The rest of us split up into 3 groups. One gathered up bedding, dishes, and other useful items; the 2nd raided the frozen foods section for dinner supplies; and the 3rd group took care of the 1/2 dozen kids with us.
The dinner making group whipped up a meal fit for a king (or at least a hungry group of survivors.) After the meal the guard shifts changed (I'm not on till morning since my night-vision is rotten.) The ones who'd been up top reported that they've only seen a few stragglers and none have looked in our direction thus far, they all seemed to be heading south...
We've really been incredibly lucky so far... only had to put down a couple handfuls and my family is still together... Don't know what tomorrow will hold but for right now, I'm going to fall asleep dreaming of a cure...#SNLIEW
That sounded better in my head but, it's been a crazy day so forgive me my rotten jokes. I was woken early this morning by the sound of sirens and the slamming of a car door. The sound rang through the previously silent night. My stepdad had raced back here at the first signs of bad stuff going down and once he explained the situation (well, summed it up anyway) we all leaped into action. He really only needed to say one word "Zombies." My mother went pale and then headed straight upstairs to get my baby sis and some clothes. We grabbed what we could, two of us standing watch with makeshift weapons while the others loaded up two cars, got the animals, and kept Rachel quiet. We began to see stragglers and the chorus of sirens was punctuated at random by frantic screams and the occasional sound of a car crash. It was horrible, but we were focused. I thanked the prescience that lead us to gas up the cars last night.
It's shameful to admit but I'm almost glad that things started to go wrong in the wee hours of morning, if it had gone crazy during rush hour we never would have made it out...
We had an idea even as we left home. We were going to Wal-mart. I was probably a bit pushy but.. it just seemed like the best type of place to hole up. The only problem was finding one that would be the easiest to clear out and defend. Thanks to Rose's plethora of smart-phone apps, we managed to find one that was a little off the beaten track (not totally surrounded by other stores and suburbs) and one that closed at night. The second part was probably most important, the idea of running into 'people of walmart: zombie edition' pretty much terrified me.
We got there in the morning and I realized that our careful yet focused travels had caught the attention of other survivors, we had a bit of a caravan going on. As we pulled our two cars into the lot a half dozen more pulled in too. They put our numbers up to almost 2 dozen along with a handful of dogs and cats. Everyone looks healthy but we all had to be checked out... once we finished scouting/clearing the place and making sure it was secure.
The whole process took time... we ran into a small group of zombies back in the loading dock area but we managed to take care of them. We also found a couple more survivors holed up in the customer service area. Once we'd gone over the place thoroughly most of us pitched in to make it secure. We used whatever we could find in order to block up glass walls and windows and locked up all the outside doors. The store's still on regular power right now but we shut down a lot of the lights in order to keep a lower profile. The roof is fairly easy to get to from inside and it's flat, even has a couple small shacks (we checked them out, they're clear) to use for storage. We moved a bunch of soil, fertilizer, pots, tools, plants and seeds up there ( we had to block off the actual garden center... just too big and open to protect.) Figure, if things stay bad, we can grow some green stuff up there so we don't all get sick...
We were all pretty exhausted after the afternoon's work but we kept sentries posted as well as watchers near the front and back of the store. The rest of us split up into 3 groups. One gathered up bedding, dishes, and other useful items; the 2nd raided the frozen foods section for dinner supplies; and the 3rd group took care of the 1/2 dozen kids with us.
The dinner making group whipped up a meal fit for a king (or at least a hungry group of survivors.) After the meal the guard shifts changed (I'm not on till morning since my night-vision is rotten.) The ones who'd been up top reported that they've only seen a few stragglers and none have looked in our direction thus far, they all seemed to be heading south...
We've really been incredibly lucky so far... only had to put down a couple handfuls and my family is still together... Don't know what tomorrow will hold but for right now, I'm going to fall asleep dreaming of a cure...#SNLIEW