Where was I? Oh, yeah - the beginning.
There were protests. Things had been going on for several weeks but then the protests had gone wrong, terribly wrong. I don’t know what happened - I had just been paying the merest attention to it. People were upset and protesting. It seemed peaceful. I hadn’t heard anything that seemed to be out of the ordinary. But then something started. A pepper-spraying incident had been caught on video and gone viral. The police started taking a harder stance on the protests. Protesters fought back. Some anarchists joined the fray and suddenly the protests got more violent. I think that was when the grandmother got killed. Some seventy-eight year old grandmother attending the protests with her grandkids. The police and the media jumped all over her saying she was endangering her grandchildren’s lives. The protesters claimed the cops had been violent and overreacted. It degenerated from there. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Tear gas came out next and then something else. No one really knew what was going on but suddenly a lot of people got really sick. Hospitalized sick. And then crazy, zombie sick. Some of them escaped the hospitals and rampaged. Whatever it was, it acted like the infections in the zombie movies - you got bit, you got infected, you became one of them. Lots of people ended up back in the hospital only to attack hospital staff and escape again to grow the infection. I guess it could be exponential or geometric growth or something. I’m not entirely sure what the math would be, but it spread faster than it seemed possible.
The president invoked martial law, created a curfew, called out the troops with the assistance of the governors. It didn’t seem to help all that much. People got caught in their homes after curfew by the zombies and killed or turned. Gun sales spiked and then were halted. Troops patrolled the streets and tried to capture or kill the zombies they found. But it was the “still mostly human” ones that got away. They still had some semblance of reasoning and hid. But then they’d get hungry or crazed and come out. “Mostly at night. Mostly,” like Newt said. And they’d catch a few more people, turn them. In the end I think the government decided to just barricade themselves behind walls. The president and congress are in some bunker, probably the one in the Appalachians. Or wherever it is they made the new one.
Regular people were left on their own. The high-end communities where I lived brought in truckloads of security guards, guns, ammo, water, and food and hunkered down. The top one percent decided to shut themselves off completely. I think they’re waiting for the end to arrive, like in 28 Days Later. “If we can just wait until they die off, we can reclaim the country and get back to normal.” At least that what I think they’re thinking. For everyone else, though - good luck.
I sent my family away to Wyoming. There are too few people there for anything to spread too far and too many guns to let it persist. There’s something about the cowboy mentality that still exists there. Hunter safety classes are required for schoolchildren. Pretty much everyone knows how to use a gun by the time they’re ten. And in this world, right now, that’s a good thing. We have family there and before things got too bad we heard that they were still normal up there. Well, as normal as can be when half the country is dead or going insane with zombie fever.
I haven’t heard from them in over a month. It’s been that long since the power went down. All the enclaves have their own generators, so there’s no need for power anywhere else. Why do zombies care whether the lights are on or not? It just matters to those of us who stayed to try to protect the ones that couldn’t get away.
I’ve found a few of those, here and there. The good thing about being in Denver is that you pretty much point them either north or east and they’re good to go. It’s getting too cold now to go to the mountains without adequate clothing. Not that the eastern plains are a safe bet either because of the weather (it gets pretty windy and the windchill can kill you) but there are far fewer people out there and it’s farther between them. It’s just safer overall. Avoiding the city is important. But I just couldn’t do that.
Why? I’ve beaten myself up on this one a lot. I couldn’t let people suffer. I don’t know what it is. It’s not like I was a firefighter or police officer “before”. I was just a white collar guy doing a white collar job who occasionally played a shooter on my Xbox. And now? I play “zombie killer” for real, every day. I guess maybe I’m just trying to end the epidemic. Seems like all of the people who didn’t clear out before the blizzard have either left or don’t matter. I haven’t seen anyone in several days. I think it’s just me and the other hunters now. I don’t see them that often, but I see their work.
I just finished the last can of Mini Raviolis and I’m bushed. Time to go on another food run. And an ammo run. I’ve got enough for now and I haven’t been bothered in a while, but supplies are running low.
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