I don’t know how it started, and I still have no idea what it is. But I’m in the shit as we speak, and that’s all that matters. I’ll worry about what the hell is going on once I’ve figured out how to get myself out of trouble, if that’s even a realistic option.
They are everywhere, seems like. The view from the upstairs windows is intimidating, revealing a mass of shuffling figures all around the house. I don’t dare crack the storm shutters on the ground floor; thankfully, we had all trees and obstacles cleared from the yard, so they’re not likely to break in upstairs.
I filled the bathtub, sinks, and every container I could find with tap water before the storm hit and the water cut off, plus the cistern on the roof seems to be holding. I’m done kicking myself for never having laid up an emergency supply, turns out the survivalist crazies were actually right. It’s mental masturbation to keep going over “what if”…I have no way of knowing whether even a disaster stash of dried noodle ramen and clean water would keep me going through whatever it is I’m facing.
The hurricane came crashing in with unholy force. I don’t imagine that much of the neighborhood is still there. Thankfully, whoever built this house was prescient or anal retentive enough to use lots of concrete, unlike the mass-produced mcmansions that had been driving real estate prices into crazy territory until the market crashed. I have no doubt that the walls and heavy windows will withstand the tempest outside, and they seem to be doing a reasonable job keeping….them…out.
I can hear them, indistinctly moaning. It’s a ghoulish, raspy sound, that permeates the rare gaps between thunder claps and sheets of rain and wind blasting the building. I’ve no doubt that the shutters and armored door are more than sufficient to protect against their uncoordinated battering and scratching, but it’s disconcerting nonetheless. And it has been going on for two days straight now. I’ve trouble sleeping, even in the comfort and quiet of the cellar room, I know that two kinds of chaos are trying to break down my windows and doors upstairs.
The absence of noise is even more disconcerting when you spend all night with your ears perked, listening anxiously for any sound stemming from the worst possible eventuality.
There wasn’t much of a dawn yesterday, just the continued black maelstrom of the biggest damn storm in my memory. The whirling madness of rain and debris occulted the sun completely. Now that it’s pitch-black night, each flash of lightning illuminates a sea of slack faces, the image staying burned into my retinae for seconds afterward.
They all look similar, but different enough for me to tell that the ones besieging me seem to eventually give up and join the others, flowing inland in a giant grey flood, only to be replaced by more of their kind. They must have come up the beach, and they still appear to be moving, except for the hundreds that stop to try and enter my home.
Initially I had to resist the temptation to open a window and take potshots at them, to see how they would react. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger. I have plenty of ammunition for the big .45, which I’ve taken to carrying with me in a holster, just in case. When I bought the damn thing, it seemed like a vanity — what kind of an idiot would ever walk around wearing a hand cannon on his hip?
Someone surrounded by a mass of ghouls in the middle of an insane Atlantic hurricane, apparently.
I’m tempted to raid the bar, get some sleeping help from Jack Daniels, take the edge off a bit. But I wisely decide against it; nerves or not, liquid courage is not the best idea now, when I need a clear head. Then again, that would presume me having some sort of option besides hunkering down and hoping the steel blinds hold, or that help arrives before I run out of food and water.
I don’t even know if they’re hostile, brain-eating monsters like in the movies, but I’m not about to find out. If they broke in, I suppose I could take out 6 of them, but the 7th shot…maybe I’d have the wherewithal to do the smart thing rather than be torn to bits by needy, clawing hands.
The whole atmosphere is permeated with a briny, sour smell that can’t come from the hurricane-borne dead fish littering my patio. It must be the things outside. They obviously are not human…were they? But what the hell is this frightening, lumbering army? I wish I had some buddhist master’s ability to meditate my mind into a state of calm and acceptance of the pickle I’m in.
Power’s out. Even with the generator, the TV is dead, as are the phone line and Internet. No cell phone coverage. I wish I hadn’t thrown out the old CB radio I’d been carrying since I was a boy, bought for $5 at an estate sale decades ago. It’s too dark to read, and I’m hoarding my few candles and flashlight batteries for…whom am I kidding? What for? Still, it wouldn’t seem right to use them. The absence of intellectual stimuli is more disconcerting than the fear itself.
I try to keep myself busy by patrolling the house, familiarizing myself with already-familiar rooms and corners, seeing if, improbably, the situation outside has changed, but I notice myself slipping into apathy and despair without some project or goal to focus on. There is nothing I can do to change my situation, I don’t even have a situation. It’s what I imagine solitary confinement or a sensory deprivation chamber to be like, no interaction with others, no intelligent way to pass the time, only one worst-case scenario after another to conjure up in a mind made hyperactive by dread and helplessness.
A heavy tremor shakes me out of my musings, and the banging and scraping at the front door becomes more agitated. I rush through the corridor, and against my better judgment, venture a peek through the spyhole. The storm’s violence is growing to unholy proportions, toward a crescendo that never seems to come.
It’s worse than anything I could have expected.
Pale, dead, flaccid faces crowd the view through the front door pinhole fisheye.
The world is ending, and I’m surrounded by zombies.
And they’re wearing three-cornered hats and eyepatches.
Zombie pirates.
It’s the arrrrhpocalypse.
