I thought back to the first time I’d really experienced true terror. It was around Labor Day and things were starting to get weird. People had been getting sick and the government was being dodgy about answering direct questions. There had been some reports - mostly tweets and Facebook postings - about people going missing. About weird things happening in the cities.
We lived in the suburbs, about thirty minutes from Denver proper. A nice neighborhood with an elementary school across the street. Whenever I think about the real horror of this whole situation, it’s always about the kids that used to go to school there. But we weren’t discussing that - we were getting to my first experience with zombies.
It was late at night, probably close to eleven, and I was doing some laundry. I had been going up and down the stairs all night, putting laundry in the washer, moving to the dryer, taking it up to hang up in the closet. Just regular, mundane things. I was going back downstairs with the laundry basket to get the last load before bed when I opened the door and saw...
He must have been turned a while before he stumbled into my house. I’m guessing he broke a window to the basement and crawled inside. He was cut up pretty bad but, because of the infection, he didn’t bleed out much. Just a lot of scabs and dried blood all over him. His eyes were sunken in and jaundiced. His lip was sliced and I could see his teeth through the slit.
He was on the staircase at the top of stairs. I’d surprised him just as he was coming upstairs. Where I was. Where my family was - my wife, my daughter, my infant son.
He gurgled something incomprehensible and grabbed my t-shirt. My martial arts training kicked in and I lashed out at him, hitting him in the chin with the palm of my hand as hard as I could. I think he bit off part of his tongue and started bleeding again, this time over my shirt and the laundry basket. He tried to pull me closer, to bite me. I think the only thing really saving me was the laundry basket between us. I pushed against him and punched him in the face, breaking his nose. He loosened his grip slightly and backed away a little. The laundry basket dropped to the floor and I kneed him as hard as I could in the groin. He doubled over a little and I brought my knee up to his chin. I felt bone break and felt blood flow over my leg. He let go and I stepped back, assuming a front stance. It took only a second for my foot to come up and hit him squarely in the chest. He fell backward down the stairs, flailing as he dropped until he landed with a hard thud on the basement floor.
I slammed the door and ran upstairs. I could feel his blood all over me and I felt dirty and completely unclean. But I had to take care of this threat to my family first. I went to the den and saw the swords. We had been collectors of various kinds for a few years. We had two katana and short sword - all of them razor sharp. I sized them up quickly and decided that the short sword would work best for what had to be done.
My wife was screaming at me, asking me if I was okay. I grunted something, unsheathed the sword, and went back downstairs. I could hear him at the door, fumbling in the dark at the handle. I waited near the door, the sword held parallel to the ground. The door opened and I saw his hand push the door open. I moved swiftly in and stabbed him in the stomach. He growled in pain and turned to look at me. I could see that his face was covered in blood, but it was dried. I couldn’t quite connect how that was possible until later.
I pulled the sword out and moved backward toward the staircase, interposing myself between him and my family. I heard a gasp behind me and I turned for a second to see my wife standing at the top of stairs holding my son in her arms, a look of horror on her face. My daughter stood next to her and began to scream. I looked back and the zombie was reaching for me. I tried to step backward out of his reach but tripped on the bottom step, falling onto the staircase. He lunged at me and it was only dumb luck that I had pulled the sword closer to me. He impaled himself on the blade, the sharp edge sliding easily between his ribs, destroying his heart instantly.
He slumped over on me and it took an incredible effort to slide out from underneath him. The sword stuck out from between his shoulder blades and blood flowed over the handle onto the stairs. My daughter was hiding her face in my wife’s side and she looked on, aghast at the sight of me and the former undead. It didn’t take much talking after that to convince her to go to Laramie and out of harm’s way. She took the dogs and the cats. Her family has a cabin up in the Snowy Range mountains should worst come to worst. It lacks a lot of amenities but it’s a lot safer and it’s a long way from any kind of civilization. Her family built it back in the 1800s; if it was good enough then, it should be just fine now.
Three days after the attack in my house things went from bad to worse. Zombie attacks got more press. Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with people talking about their experiences. Missing person reports flooded the police stations. The government still wouldn’t come out with an answer or directions. “Stay home and stay protected” was about all anyone would say. Finally around the middle of September there was an attack in broad daylight on the 16th Street Mall. Some kids had been hanging out in an alley smoking when they were attacked. Three of them were killed and two were bitten.
Two days after that people decided to get the hell out of Dodge. And that same day Denver got hit by a massive snowstorm. The news was focused on the zombie threat and the military deployments. People ignored the warnings and tried to flee. They said that almost a million people died in the storm: from accidents, freezing to death in the snow, or from the zombies that found them when they tried to find shelter. After that the enclaves shut themselves away and the zombies started roaming free.
Strangely my wife didn’t have a problem with me staying. We talked about, about friends we had all over town that we wanted to make sure were safe. When I told her I was thinking of staying she said she already knew - knew before I did. I wish I could explain, but I can’t. It was the right thing. I saved a couple of neighbors, their daughter is a friend of my daughter. They were packing up their truck when they were attacked. It took me far too many bullets that day, but I took down the zombies. They were headed to South Dakota, they said - had family somewhere. I told them about my family going to Laramie. Maybe they changed their minds.
Phones and the internet went out pretty quickly. Without people to handle the power stations or fixed down lines or transformers, things tend to degrade fast. I think it was right about the beginning of football season when we ended up on our own. I’d heard about the richer, gated communities locking their doors. Some people had tried to approach and learned the hard way. Zombies didn’t get too close and eventually learned to just avoid the places. They still wandered around and some of the not-quite-sick-enough-to-be-full-on-zombies were still capable of regular tasks - driving and such. They would drive around until they fell too ill to continue and just leave their car wherever it was. Sometimes they’d smash into other things. Mostly they just made a mess of some of the roads. Hampden, for instance, was a total mess.
Some groups of teens began forming hunting parties to go look for zombies before the storm hit. Some of them were pretty successful, but most ended up getting in over their heads, a little too much bravado for their own good. When families packed up, most of the kids left too. A few remained, probably because their families had been turned.
The homeless were pretty much screwed from the get-go. They were the most vulnerable before things started and they ended up being the first ones to get attacked and turned or killed. I’ve always had a soft spot for the homeless and it was devastating to see what happened to them.
Enough reminiscing. For today I did some reconnaissance of the neighborhood. It’s mostly cleared out. I heard a few muffled moans in a house about ten blocks away, but overall it seems pretty safe here. I cleaned out the Hummer and packed everything into the lodge and then drove the SUV several blocks away and parked it on a street. If dreadlock boy or his hunter come looking for me, they’re going to have to put in some time. The sun was out as well, melting most of the snow. It would difficult to know I was there without tracking me from somewhere. I’m going to start my hunting tomorrow morning to see if I can find out what the hell is going on in that neighborhood.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning my guns and doing some reading. I find it almost ironic that now that the world’s turned upside down I feel like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode where he’s just trying to read all the time. I’ve been reading a lot since things went south - at first most of them were books about the care and maintenance of guns but now that I’ve gotten proficient at that I’ve turned to more traditional books. I spent most of the afternoon just lounging on the couch from the side room reading The Iliad. It was almost normal.
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