I can’t even begin to express how long this weekend was. I heard back from a few people about the town hall meetings and apparently Sacramento got enough of their shit together to finally secure the freeways! Maybe I was too harsh when I judged that the government, for all intents and purposes, was null and void. I’d like to see the trains running again before I declare total victory, but getting public transportation via charter bus was a huge step forward. Much like every other public facility there were security contractors posing as US military guarding the station. Big dudes with kevlar vests and two million pockets stood checking tickets and frisking travelers for concealed weapons. The keyword there is concealed. Everyone had something on them, be it a machete or shotgun, it was simply a matter of checking your weapon and placing it in the secure bin underneath the bus. Every weapon gets a tag; every owner gets the same tag. One line, two guards, no exceptions. The system is too organized to actually succeed in this town though. Once the flesh feeders took over, nothing organized worked again. They’re chaos. They’re chaos, and chaos seeks out and destroys all forms of order and all lines of organization. Those god forsaken zombies are infected with chaos, and they spread their disease to all they encounter. Knowing this, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when the bus was attacked.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t tell my secrets too often, but in the spirit of this blog, I will give you a secret. Cash isn’t worth shit.
Soon after the fall, the US government put a price fix on everything public: gas, water, power, transportation, powdered milk, canned food… that sort of thing. So here I was at the bus station, and the sign says $45 round trip, but the $50 I have in my hand won’t get me a ticket. The $100 the guy in front of me had would not get him a ticket. And in a world where everyone has a gun and everyone has a death wish, robbery doesn’t go over so well. Throw out everything you know about value. No one wants a fancy watch. No one cares about your Ferrari or your Mercedes, those are going to be broken down on the side of the road, and you’ll probably die inside of it.
There’s a guy in my community who brews his own beer and I usually trade whatever he asks for it. Three years ago this guy was practically on the streets begging for money, drinking away his failed marriage. Now, dude’s a king; he’s a veritable god amongst mortals. I don’t brew beer and I’m a lousy butcher, but men have needs and I am a twisted lonely little person. After the fall we all looted. Some folks went after groceries and ammunition, some after electronics and valuables, I went after porn.
I have boxes and boxes of dirty magazines that will last me until the end of my life, or until the end of the world. I take this porn, and I use it to buy things like beer and food and, if I’m lucky, bullets. In this case, I use porn to buy a bus ticket. Well, I use porn and $45 to buy a bus ticket.
On this same looting tangent, I’ve been carrying around this gorgeous 1960’s Remington 30.06 the past few days, and I tell you, I’m starting to like it. It’s an old hunting rifle with someone’s initials, CW, engraved on the receiver. So often I find myself to be alone, and my weapon is my only companion. I never thought I’d find a friend like my stolen shotgun, but this little hunting rifle I’ve been carrying around is starting to feel pretty good strapped to my back. Even though the shotgun is still the perfect weapon for my daily life; when you’re on the run, you don’t have to worry about anything that isn’t directly in your path. Stay sharp, and stay fast, and a shotgun is the perfect weapon. I remember Thanksgiving, almost three months ago, when we started to really fight back. A group of us were on a hill, eyes down, looking through telescopic sights picking off the undead in the streets below. The thing about fighting zombies is: you’re never safe. There is no safe sniping position and what we learned that day is you never lie down and take your time. If you’re outside of protected land, and you aren’t running, you’re going to get bit. They got two of us before we made our retreat down into the streets. A shotgun is much easier to operate at full sprint than a sniper rifle. That being said, munitions diversity is very important, because you aren’t only defending yourself from the undead.
This marks the first time I’ve traveled on a major freeway in over six months. I remember the days before the fall where concrete and traffic and cars and cars and cars and business and life were all around. It was just miles and miles of endless tarmac and city, ushering you along towards your destination. Now, as I made the first ten miles south to San Diego, there was only a small scattering of standing buildings. The vast majority of them were boarded up or broken down. The sky is a Van Gogh painting of swirling blue sky, black smoke, and white clouds. There hasn’t been a clear sunny day in months and getting out on the road makes you remember all that. Man has suddenly been put back in direct contact with nature. If you ask me, that’s what’s getting people freaked out. Holding the door shut after your dying child reanimates and tries to smash out of quarantine to rip you to shreds is pretty freaky. Watching your wife get tackled and pinned to the ground as a living cadaver gnaws on the bony part of her neck, not even taking time to spit the blood soaked hairy mess out of his mouth is pretty gut wrenching. You can easily have nightmares about wandering around the streets naked while everyone around you is all at once clothed, dead, and hungry. You can live in constant fear of a violent and horrific death, unless you take the time to visit some place new. You know, a nice vacation. Just make sure you don’t go advertising your route, and don’t tell people how many guards will be on board, and please don’t tell people that the passengers will safely stow their weapons in the bins below, unless you’re planning on being robbed.
We’re right where two freeways meet in what was once Irvine, and wouldn’t you know it, we’re hit with some pretty heavy gunfire. The guards know a thing or two and hit the deck and get the driver to punch it. The good thing is this driver is good under fire and does exactly that. The bad thing is the bus has a pretty huge windshield, and the driver is a pretty easy target. It doesn’t take two seconds from the time the driver gets shredded with some large caliber fire before he spins the bus into the center divider, and lets it tip over, teetering on its side and instantly transforming the freeway into a battle zone.
At this point I kick the lid off the bus and crawl underneath to relative safety, where I can actually assess the situation. Let me paint a scene for you real quick. One bus, spilled over with cargo coming out the sides and the sound of two dozen panicked morons. Two jeeps pulled alongside the wreckage with bandits sitting in every seat, armed to the teeth. Smoke in the skies. Fire in the distance. Broken down suburbia pushed to the side of the interstate, plowed out of the way for the surviving few who still dare travel. Me, underneath a bus. An open cargo door and 5 different choices of weaponry laid out in front of me with name tags on it. Thank you Mr. Valle, Mr. Smith, and Ms. Taylor, your sidearms proved to be vital to all of our survival.
I do exactly like my father taught me and sat real still. I sat real still and waited. I waited for two of these asshole wannabe zombie killers to come up to the bus before I step out and open fire. I get three of them good and dead, but most importantly I give enough time for those big bruising bastards with the kevlar and the M-16’s to pile out of the bus and really unleash hell. Not a second too soon either. Before I had the chance to dive back down for cover, I took a shot to the top of my shoulder just under the shirt. One inch down and I can’t move my arm. I’m crippled in the land of the living dead and I possibly bleed out. Three inches to the right, my right, not the shooter’s right, and I’m a body waiting to be shoved to the side of the interstate to make way for the next bus, but not before being doused in fuel and roasted like the 4th of July. No doubt these bandits were teamed with snipers positioned off to the side of the road, waiting patiently for the ambush - but our bus was late. Very late.
My guess is they weren’t hiding as well as they should have been. Maybe they’re in a tree or behind some shrubs. A smart battle tactician would find a way into one of the office towers three hundred yards out and used the high ground to their advantage. Either way, what’s important to know here is that zombies aren’t always growling like they do in the movies. Sometimes they’re very quiet and very sneaky. Because we weren’t taking sniper fire, I’m sure there are a few sniper corpses lying in an abandoned building about three hundred yards out. There’s a few corpses in an abandoned building all chewed to shit, infected with a virus that’s still keeping their blood boiling hot, and waiting to reanimate once more, seeking to destroy all signs of humanity that remain. When the shooting stopped I stepped outside my cover to see the battlefield. Only one guard is left on his feet, a big dude with the nametag Ennis over his right breast plate. Ennis is moving people into the jeeps and trying to clear the scene. I see this big guy Ennis taking charge and I knew it was in my best interest to listen up. But I couldn’t hear shit. All I heard was the bullet that nearly took me down still screaming past my ear, but I can see Ennis tell me “Good work,” as he pats me on my bleeding shoulder. It’s either that or “Get going.”
To be honest, the road to San Diego is so beautiful and it was such a nice day. I truly preferred going by jeep. Enough of us had been gunned down that the two jeeps had enough room to support us. At this point in history the death toll doesn’t shock me. It doesn’t faze me one little bit. I’d just been involved in a horrible bus accident and a violent bandit assault and had just taken the lives of several living men, and I didn’t feel shit. If you ask me what I hate most about this current state of affairs, it’s how hard I’ve become. I wasn’t a killer. I wasn’t a badass. I had a girlfriend. I had a little puppy with a little pink collar and a bushy white tail. I’ve done what I’ve had to to survive and I’ve become what I’ve had to become to survive. Sure, I hated watching my little pink pup get ripped to shreds by the same pack of god forsaken zombie bastards that ransacked my home and murdered my family. Yeah, I hate not having heard from my girlfriend since we last saw each other the day before the fall. But if you really want to know what I hate, it’s who I’ve become, and who I’ve left behind.
The thing I love about San Diego is the same thing that used to bug the Hell out of me. Everywhere you turn, there’s military. Nowadays, San Diego is a popular destination for political conferences, business meetings, vacations, or if you simply need to recover after a zombie bit off your arm. Of course, the hospitals here are overloaded with the sick and dying. If it were my choice, I’d never go in there. They’re not finding any cures. No matter how much research anyone does on any of these poor infected civilians, they’re not finding any cures. If I get bit, I’m not going to a hospital, where I’ll be tied down to a bed and eventually put to sleep like a stray in the pound. If I get bit, I’m not going to a hospital. I’m going to take whatever weapons I can carry. I’m going to take however many guns and bullets I can hold. I’m going to grab a real arsenal and march straight into Zombie territory and bring as many of those undead pieces of trash with me to Hell.
I told you this weekend was good, and it was. I spent the whole Saturday on the beach smoking grass with some friends I hadn’t seen in months. If you’re going to visit San Diego, bring your own food, because there isn’t a whole lot of that going around that town. I brought a few boxes of granola bars with me and gave it to my friends because it was clear they’d been on a pretty heavy diet of find it yourself grub. Sure, they’ve got drugs and alcohol down here, but there isn’t enough rations to serve to the overwhelmed local communities. As nice as it is to be safe behind the walls of the world’s strongest army, it’s also nice to look after yourself, knowing that you have the freedom from want, so long as you have the ability to survive.
That being said I took the bus back home the next morning. Needless to say they learned their lesson. My ride back home looked like something out of a Mad Max movie. A bull dozer scoop was recklessly thrown on the front of the bus. Iron bars had been placed over the windows. Pieces of sheet metal lined the bus front to back and there were twice as many guards. There were twice as many guards and twice the amount of paranoia. To be honest, I’d prefer to go back by jeep, but am thankful I made it back here at all. Back to the daily grind at the shelter. Back to running.
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