Night Terrors
19:40 hours approximate
Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA — Fortress
Why in the hell did we ever leave? There is a reason I named this place Fortress and leaving it was never a good idea. Unfortunately, Joel made a very convincing argument that we needed to return to the San Diego Naval base for supplies. He used small words like “we need food and ammo, you dumb squid.”
Joel never listened to my ideas. I’d made a few but I was sick and tired of the Marine giving me a ration of shit for every single one of them.
“Let’s go raid cars.”
“Bad idea,” he’d say. “Could be the wrong car is full of dead.”
Could be? Sure, but we’re good at killing them. Real good. If there was an Olympics held today for how to kill Z’s, we’d at least win the bronze.
“Let’s go find a house with an abandoned hot tub so we can take a bath.”
“Then we’d be caught with our pants down.” Jesus, he could be such a drag.
“Let’s go find other survivors.”
“They’ll just steal our stuff or maybe try to eat us.” On second thought, that one actually made sense.
“Christ, Joel. No one’s going to eat us.”
“Not yet. Wait until they haven’t eaten for a few days,” he said ominously. I dropped it.
Anyway, I would do my usual list of food supplies but I’m too pissed off right now so I’ll do it tomorrow. There’ll be less to write about by then if Roz has her say.
Yeah — Roz.
24 October, 20:08 hours approximate
Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA
Weapons:
1 AR-15
3 30 round mags
97 Rounds of 5.56 ammo
1 Colt M45A1 Handgun
42 Rounds of .45 ammo
1 Sig Sauer P229
14 rounds of 9mm ammo
1 very large fucking wrench
1 12 gauge Remington pump action shotgun
4 12 gauge shells
The other night I finished up my entry regarding how Joel, Reynolds, and I escaped from the USS McClusky. As best as I could tell, of the 178 souls on board, only three of us managed to get off the ship before it smashed into the pier and exploded.
It was late and I was about to blow out my candle for the night when I heard something below. Night gets real quiet except for the occasional helicopter in the distance or an airplane too high to see. Every time I heard those I wondered if it was our time to die. I was surprised they hadn’t already nuked this dead fucking cesspool.
The noise was different than the Z’s that sometimes shamble by. This was more like someone on the move. Someone that has a purpose. But it was gone as soon as I’d convinced myself to get up and check it out.
Eventually I fell asleep but had my wrench within reach and the pistol tucked under my pillow. I may be one paranoid mother fucker but I’m also one very alive mother fucker.
Today we did the same thing as yesterday—broke down our weapons and cleaned them. I even took a cloth to my wrench head and got most of the blood, hair, and brain matter off of it.
After we’d bitched and bickered and then managed not to kill each other, I went to bed and considered rolling a joint. I didn’t, though, because as much as I love to give the Marine shit, I didn’t really want to let him down. And if I got high and some of those things got in here I might just giggle my ass off while I looked for something to kill them with.
I was dozing when I heard it again.
I was sure I’d heard voices and then something got knocked over. Shit! Now I knew I wasn’t crazy. I heard more voices and decided that if we had looters alerted to our location I should just go out there and scare them away. Now how fucking stupid is that? What was I going to do? Go out there dressed like a horrible monster? Those are a dime a dozen now. I’d be like “BOO!” And they’d be like “SHOOT IT!”
I felt around in the dark until I located my lighter, struck a flame, then fumbled around for my shirt. Joel had left his pair of NVG’s hanging on the wall so I grabbed those and slid them over my head. He’d be pissed if he found me wearing his toys. Joel always worried about how much juice the batteries had remaining. I worried about being killed by those fucking things out there, so I guess that made us kind of even.
Switching on the NVG’s brought the world into shades of green. I moved to a window and scanned the ground below. There were a few trees out there but most were so dry from the heat, they didn’t even have leaves. Bushes were easy to pick out. I could look out without the goggles and see a dozen things that scared the shit out of me.
I hovered for a few minutes just watching the ground a story below. When nothing materialized, I moved to the other side of the house. Joel was still snoring away behind his cracked door. I looked in and found him sprawled out on the mattress. The first thing Joel did when we took over the house was drag the mattress off the bed. I asked him why and he said he felt safer.
“A Marine scared of things under the bed?” I’d asked.
“Hey man. There are a lot of things out there to be scared about. This is one less.”
With the Night Vision Goggle over my eye I was able to move around the dark house with ease. I checked the other side of the house but didn’t see anything. I hovered by a window and listened for a good fifteen minutes but there was nothing.
Maybe I was just going stir crazy.
It took a half-second to wake up Joel. He was on his feet and reaching for his assault rifle so fast it was like he had a giant spring built in his ass. His room smelled like sweat and oil. That would be Joel and his best friend, an assault rifle.
“Shh,” I whispered. “I think someone’s outside.”
“Just leave the dead fucks be. They’ll wander away. Now let a brother get some shut eye.”
“I don’t know. It’s so quiet, maybe I was just hearing things, but these things sounded like voices.”
“Shit,” Joel said. “Lemme grab the NVGs.”
I handed them over. Good thing it was dark so I didn’t have to put up with a dirty look.
Joel grumped around doing Marine shit while I waited. I did a check of my side arm and ran through ammo, slide, and safety positioning. I had a full mag of 7 rounds and one in the chamber. One more mag went into a pocket and I dropped a handful of shells into my other. My lucky .45 round was still in its place right next to my hip. All I needed was my wrench and I was ready to bash some heads.
Going outside meant navigating off the deck. There’s no other way in unless someone has a tool that can bust the front door off. We picked this place because it had one main entrance. We filled the entryway with crap like a sofa and then piled a few bodies on top. It made for a gruesome entry.
Next chapter I’ll write about Fortress, promise. That way, if my corpse is found, readers will understand what a pain in the ass this place was to secure and appreciate all the effort we went through.
You’re welcome.
The only dead that stopped by were ignored. If they got persistent Joel and I would drop cinder blocks on their heads. The blocks were attached to ropes so we could pull them back up. We had a pool going on weekly kills and I was up by three. The best part was trying to get their attention just before the block struck. They’d look up with that blank face, those white eyes, and then SPLAT!
Joel went out and stared into the dark for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. I waited and went over my gun again and again.
Joel had taught me to treat it like a girl with a rocking body. You want to know every inch of her because you can’t dream about her later unless you’ve been hands-on for hours.