Saturday, July 26
Rolled the dice today. We’ve put off until today clearing the larger building for fear of what we felt we were sure to encounter. It was voted on and unanimous that we go into this three-story affair. It is, In fact, the largest building in the com-pound. It sits on what I would guess to be an area that would be two blocks long and one block wide.
There are large double doors on all four sides of the ground floor. The second floor only offered tall, thin windows that nobody could crawl through if we wanted to access the building from that level. The third-floor is like the top of a wedding cake inasmuch as it is recessed in from the outer edges of the first and second floor. There is a balcony railing all the way around as well.
We grappled and climbed to discover that sliding glass doors provide entrance on all four sides and thick blinds are still intact on most of the windows.
This is where they seemed to have brought a good many of the children. Most of them were five and under. To say the very least, this morning was unpleasant. We also encountered two elderly ladies that I imagine brought death with them since neither had bites from small mouths. There were also a few teens.
We noticed something odd with the youngsters. At first, nobody could place it. The top priority was to put them all down, so nobody was taking a lot of time to examine bodies. However, once we finished, the realization was immediate and practically everybody picked up on it. Almost all the baby-teeth have fallen out of the mouths of the zombie-children! And since they are in all respects dead, no adult teeth grew back in. That does not lessen their danger level much, but it helped.
There were a couple of large rooms, what looked like a big, open, gathering place, and one large bedroom. I’m guessing this floor was ceremonial in capacity. The ceiling is glass which meant this floor was lit naturally for the most part. I’ve found no artificial light source, so I’m pretty confident in my guess here.
We were going to simply toss the corpses, but there is just something about all these things having been children. So, we lowered them down by ropes and, in a big gravel lot that is full of cars that will probably never leave their spots, we have a pile of bodies growing that we plan to torch.
Tomorrow we’ll go down to the second floor.
Sunday, July 27
Slept in shifts because of the constant racket from the zombies downstairs. Many of which came up the stairwells and spent the night on the other side of the thick oak doors at the ends of the north-south running main hallway.
We tossed a coin and decided to open the south set this morning. Everything was going fine, but at some point Julie saw somebody she recognized and just freaked out. Do you remember when Bill Paxton’s character in Aliens does the total ‘crazy marine’ bit after he goes through the floor and starts yelling stuff like “Oh you want some?” “Here, eat some of this!” “You too!” All of that right before he dies. Well, Julie’s episode was pretty similar. She started screaming things like “You can’t fight this!” “They’ll get everybody!” and “I told you not to go outside! You should’ve listened!” As she waded into the midst of a pack of those things that were struggling to climb the stairs, she went down and everybody lost sight of her.
Jack was screaming her name and Sugar did her best to keep him from following. Meanwhile, we were using some ancient war tactic of fighting side-by-side, three wide. Every couple of minutes, the group in front disengaged, stepped back, and were then replaced by the trio behind them. I don’t complain, it works and so I’m happy to try ideas that come from other members of the team. Anyways, the zombies, as of late, haven’t left enough of their victims to return in most cases because there are so many who dive in and feast. The stairwell seemed to have hampered them from finishing off all of Julie because about five or ten minutes later she shambled towards the front three of me, Troy Marsh, and Delmar Jones. She was tore up really bad, but mobile. The worst part, besides most of her abdominal cavity having been ripped out, was the way her head just lolled to one side because most of her neck had been eaten.
It took us a good part of the morning to just sit and wait and to use our bash-and-slash tactic to eliminate what must be most of the zombies. We killed forty-six when it was all said and done.
Nobody felt like going downstairs and sweeping the floor for stragglers. At least we have something to do tomorrow.
Monday, July 28
Finished the second floor. This was some sort of meditation area. There are several small rooms with speakers set in the walls. The floors are hardwood, but many had mats or remnants of mats. I also noticed a couple of rooms that were not contaminated at all and there were bottles of scented oils. I only recognized eucalyptus.
The bottom floor was actually a bit easier to clear. It was sectioned into four parts. Each large room was mirrored on two sides. In the center was some sort of reception area on a raised dais. This was also where we found a narrow hallway that led to a single metal door.
Sure enough we found two huge diesel generators. We also lucked out by finding ten fifty-gallon drums, a dolly, and a hand pump.
We all agreed not to turn these babies on until Roy gives them a good going over and we’ve cleaned the place out, gone through and shut everything off. It would be bad if we powered up and a fire set off or something equally bad.
Snoe is leaving tomorrow with Jimmy Mitchell, Caren Pilgrim, Jacob Porter, Tracy Russell, and Cera Lee. They will slip into Trout Creek and scavenge supplies. You can never have enough guns, ammo, and medicine. No matter what, they are to be back in five days. We will have a radio relay team—Gene Tasker and Brad Johnson—who will set up in between our position here and Snoe’s team. I hope that she can get in and out without too much zombie interference. More importantly, no roaming bands of living lunatics.
Tuesday, July 29
More killing. Men. Women. Children. After a while there is no difference. Size, age, and sex make absolutely no distinction. You either put them down…or you become one of them. It isn’t safe to try and think of those things as having once been us. I found this written on a scrap of paper:
They are empty shells.
Clawing.
Scratching.
Biting.
Eyes devoid of life.
Hunger never-ending.
Victimizing victims.
Fate’s losers, yet champions.
They are we.
We are meat.
Thursday, July 31
Snoe reached Trout Creek. Reported that there was very little to scavenge. But she and her team will scoop up what there is. The good news is that she said the zombie population was even more sparse than Noxon.
Here at the complex—now being called Huckelberry Gulch—we are almost clear. Tomorrow we will burn the bodies stacked up in the parking lot in a large clearing a few hundred yards away. It is hot and dry, and at least for now, there is very little wind. We debated our choices and decided that the fire will likely only attract the living. We will be on high alert in case of marauders. That central building we cleared with the windows facing all four sides gives us a distinct advantage over anybody who tries to approach.
We found a small backhoe in one of the buildings and already have begun digging a trench that is going to be about three-feet-wide and six-feet-deep (sorta the width of a grave). We want it to run the entire perimeter of this place. It will keep the stragglers out. It will also help expose anybody living. To reach this complex they will cross sixty to seventy yards of open terrain that we will burn off the same day we torch the corpse pile. Then, they will have to jump or cross that trench in some manner.