Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Is it just me? Are you kind of a douchbag? Discuss...
- Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
I am sort of douchebaggy. Douchebag-like. Doucebagesque. I never noticed that before. Thank you so much for bringing my douchebaggery to my attention. If I pretend that I'll change, will you pretend to care?
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
WTF was up with all the zombie stuff yesterday?
- C0nfoozed
Dear C0nfoozed,
I was participating in a collaborative blogging event called "Blog Like It's The End Of The World," which featured dozens of bloggers from around the world writing for one day as if Earth were being overrun by a Romero-style invasion of the shambling dead.
It wound up being a fascinating and entertaining experiment in collaborative storytelling, and my contribution was far from the most interesting. You can check out the other participants, and get in on plans for next year's event, at http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled (and sporadically entertaining) schedule.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
How did you die?
- Posterity
Dear Posterity,
Unless I think of some easy way to kill myself in the next few minutes, you can bet that I was torn to pieces and eaten by a bunch of mindless, shuffling freaks bent on consuming my brain. And I'm not talking about Creationists, har har.
The rain I expected never came. After about an hour, I got impatient. People in the office were getting increasingly agitated, and any second now, somebody was going to start a fight. I couldn't bear the inevitably cliché "we have to stick together" resolution, so I slipped out a back window and onto the adjacent roof. Moving slowly and carefully, (looking, no doubt, like Batman's clinically retarded little brother) I worked my way west to the other end of the block.
The westernmost building on the block sits rights across the street from the tunnel that leads north to the subway station. As I was hoisting myself onto its roof, I fell over a short wall and into a flock of pigeons. They exploded into the air, and the noise they made in the relative quiet felt like somebody vomiting in church; I figured it would get everybody's attention. I assumed that any zombies on the street who bothered to look up at the noise would follow the birds' flight, and I was mostly right. Mostly.
After a few heart-pounding moments, I peeked over the edge, and I saw something that curdled my blood. There were about a dozen of the shuffling fuckers in the street below me, and they watched the birds sweep down and then back up, settling on the roof of a building across the street. Once the motion stopped, most of them went back to shuffling mindlessly down the block. Two of them, though, stayed where they were. Then, slowly but deliberately, they turned their heads and looked up at the place where the birds had come from. Right at me.
I'm running out of time. I guess I'll have to encapsulate. I got down off the roof. Me and my makeshift mace (I named her "Clubarella." Did I tell you that?) bashed in the heads of the brain-munchers who figured out I was up there, plus the heads of the three I stumbled on squabbling over the remains of a tourist family stuck in the turnstiles of the subway station. (Nobody should ever have to die in a "Virginia Is For Lovers" t-shirt.) I'll spare you the slog through the tunnel out of Center City. Just imagine a lot of panting, darkness made more threatening by the dancing circle of the flashlight beam, and barely managing not to pee myself when that rat landed on my shoulder.
After emerging from underground, the subway twists north and turns into an elevated track. I walked on the track all the way to my usual station, and then made my way through backyards and alleys to our house. Amy had done a great job of barricading the front of the house. Since all the row homes on our block are contiguous, the back patio is completely out of sight of the street. I scaled the fence, and went in the back door. And barely managed to duck before Amy took my head off with the golf club she'd dug out of the basement. (She's so awesome.)
They're scrabbling at the door now. It won't be long, so I guess I can drop some spoilers. Amy lives. She and the pets are on their way to rural New York state with all the food we looted from the corner grocery store. Her family has a secluded cabin up there, and she knows plenty of back roads to get her there. Why am I not going with her? Well, I was supposed to, but it didn't work out. I'd tell you why, but the door just collapsed. It was heroic, I can tell you that much. I should just have time to hit the "publish"
disclaimer
SOME OF THEM CAN STILL THINK!!!
I'm not sure if there's even anyone out there who can still read this. After a few really close calls, I'm home. More on that later. For now, you need to know that they're NOT all brain-dead. Some of them, especially the relatively fresh ones, still have some neurons firing. Given a little time, they can figure out how to open doors and go around structures that they can't get into. They're mostly instinct, and definitely take the path of least resistance, but if you assume that they're completely clueless, it could kill you!
disclaimer
I've gotta get out of this place...
The power's back on. Who knows for how long? It's been in and out for the last few hours. Phones are working, but calls don't go through. Busy signals, sometimes not even that.
The barricades seem to be holding up better than my co-workers. People are jumpy, testy. Fights are inevitable. I don't want to be here when it starts.
After a search of the floors that above the barricades, I've put together a traveling kit: a flashlight, some bottled water, matches, some snacks raided from the fridge. Weapons were hard to come by. I dismantled some shelves for the vertical supports. They're steel tubes, about three and a half feet long. Fairly sturdy, light enough to swing, but heavy enough to do some damage. I also grabbed a few pairs of scissors, but if they get close enough that I need those, I'm pretty much fucked.
Dark clouds are rolling in, and I'm hearing thunder in the distance. Once it starts to rain, I'm going to make a break for it. I figure the rain will make it harder to see AND smell. The roofs on this block are all about the same height. I think I can get most of the way to the subway station before I have to go down to the street. If it's clear, I can use the tunnel and tracks to get to within a mile of home. If it's not clear... let's hope it's clear.
If I can get home and get my wife, we're close to the highway. We can get out of town. If I don't make it, I want someone to know that I tried. Wish me luck.
disclaimer
Holy fuck, it's zombies...
The lobby of our building is... was fronted in glass. The guy in the cubicle next to came running back into the office saying that he went down there trying to go home, and there was a bunch of them milling around outside. When they saw him come out of the elevator, they crushed themselves up against the glass and it collapsed. He barely got back into the elevator.
We've got the elevators shut down, and we stuffed the stairway full of everything we could get our hands on. We're taking shifts keeping lookout on the roof, watching for possible incursion and/or rescue.
As long as it stays on, we've got water. Food is another story...
disclaimer
Local:
People are leaving. I heard a few people talking about going home, but I didn't really notice how many. I just looked around the office, and it looks like barely half of us are still here. The rest of us aren't getting any work done. Some people are standing around speculating, others (like me) are searching for information online.
Things are getting even weirder out on the street. People are wandering around like they're stoned. I wonder how much weed it would take to bake an entire city block...
Wider:
It's not just Philly. I'm finding reports of odd stuff from all over the place. The "real" news is almost useless. They're talking around it, reporting on traffic jams and other stuff. What I'm finding online, though, is just crazy. Blogs from all over are calling it zombies. Zombies? I'm all for creative hysteria, but come on.
disclaimer
Just got a call from my wife
Things are still weird in Fishtown. She's hearing a lot of sirens, and seen people running around. Worst of all, she thinks she's heard gunfire too. She's scared, and so am I. We talked seriously about boarding up the windows on the first floor.
I'd so much rather be there than here. Not only would I be with my wife, but we've got some food and bottled water stashed in the basement, in case this turns out to be something really serious.
disclaimer
Holy crap...
I think there's a riot going on somewhere. I keep seeing people running, and the police station across the street is going nuts. Cars every few seconds, and...
okay, I'm almost certain I just heard gunshots from down there. I'm up on the fifth floor, so I guess it could have been a car backfiring, but I don't think so.
disclaimer
So distracting...
Man, all of downtown hates me this morning. Sirens, people yelling, drivers laying on horns like they're dispensing candy. I can't even begin to concentrate...
disclaimer
Oh, man.
This day just keeps getting odder. The local news station is saying that the blue line is shut down because there was an accident on one of the trains. I hope they get it straightened out before I have to go home. I don't relish having to walk home from Center City.
disclaimer
Weirdness ensues.
The weirdness started on my way to the train this morning. I've been walking to the train almost every morning for nine months, and I noticed for the first time that there's a funeral home about two blocks from our house! It's in an average rowhouse sized space; the exterior is so nondescript, and the sign so small and bland, that it just never registered.
So this morning as I'm walking past it, I hear this scream, like somebody getting stabbed. I snapped out of my usual morning sleepwalk, and my eyes caught the sign. I listened for a minute, but I didn't hear anything else, so I decided to get going.
When I got to the station, another totally random thing happened. After just missing the first train (of course!), I was sitting on the platform, and this guy comes walking up and asks if I have a band-aid. I said no, and he says that a homeless guy bit him! He showed me this wound on his upper arm, and I'll be damned if it didn't look like a bite mark. Because of my pack-rat tendencies, I had a big wad of convenience store napkins in my bag, so I gave him those so he could at least cover the wound. He said he had a first-aid kit at work, so I figured that would hold him until he got there.
He wandered away and sat down, and I got absorbed in the silly little train station newspaper. We got on the train when it came a few minutes later. When I got off in Center City, I happened to catch sight of him, and he didn't look so hot. He was awfully pale, and his head was nodding like he was about to pass out. I think maybe he was in some kind of shock. I felt bad leaving him there, but I was on the verge of being late, and I'm so NOT a doctor that I'm kind of anti-matter doctor; anything I do tends to make things worse. Besides, there were a bunch of people on the train already, so I figure somebody would help him out if he got any worse.
The SEPTA Situation is Even More Dire than I Suspected
I got to the Huntingdon station on the Market-Frankford line at about 2:10 this afternoon. Typically, I missed the train by about 45 seconds, but that's a different rant. When I got to the top of the stairs, the booth which usually houses the helpful*, attentive** SEPTA employee was dark and empty. A cardboard sign stuck in the window read "USE BIG GATE TO LEFT," and included three helpful arrows for riders like myself who, on the verge of heatstroke from walking to the train through the soup that is the summer in Philly, had a little trouble focusing on the words.
I live and die by the Blue Line, so I've observed plenty of SEPTA's worker drones. I know that they're usually stuck in a tiny booth by themselves for hours at a time, and I don't begrudge one of them needing to take a bathroom/snack/smoke break, especially when they leave the gate unlocked so riders who show up while they're out of the booth can get to the platform. They get to take care of their basic biological functions, and I save a token. However, when I reached the gate area, the newly-returned attendant was berating a man who was having trouble going through the gate. He couldn't get it to open, and she was rudely directing him to the open gate. Which was on the far right. The best part? Her parting shot at he went through the gate was "that's what it say on the sign!"
Apparently, the transit organization can't even afford to hire people who know which hand makes the "L" when you stick out your thumb. I am suddenly in favor of casinos, if the state will promise to dedicate some of the revenue to ensuring all SEPTA workers have a first grade education.
*unhelpful **inattentive
