How I Survived - 2. Chapter 2

It’s been two days since I first typed up that journal entry, or whatever the hell I should call it. Pretty much I thought I would be able to get along fine without it, but it turns out it helps me a lot. That’s kinda sucky though, because I don’t want to be lugging around a laptop with me, but it’s not that bad. Maybe I’ll just save my entries on a flash drive and get a new laptop each time I stop. At this point most houses are abandoned, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find one.

Sitting here, I wonder if my house has been picked over yet. We left it fairly full, just taking some clothes and food when we ran. Oh, and when I say ‘we’ I am referring to my parents and my sister. We had all stayed in the house for about a month while the outbreak was fairly contained. When things started to get out of hand though, we thought we would head up north. You see, we lived in Massachusetts, so being a few hours from Boston we thought would be dangerous, because that would be a good zombie-factory. So we decided to go further north where there are less people and more high ground.

Only my sister and I made it though. We had not yet seen a real zombie in person, just some clips that were played on the TV or obviously spamming the internet, but we were still scared shitless, for lack of a better term. So, of course this fright was clouding everyone’s judgment, including my father, who was driving the car. With fear comes paranoia, and with paranoia comes constantly checking behind you. And sadly, with constantly looking over your should, comes not seeing the fucking deer in the road. So that was it. Ironically, in a world plagued with the walking dead, both my parents died by a deer, in such a pre-apocalyptic manner.

It wasn’t really the most glorious death for them to have, but at least it was better than being torn limb from limb; a fate that my sister didn’t escape. She and I were both pretty shaken from the crash, and obviously more shaken from seeing our parents slumped over with bits of glass and blood shimmering in their faces. If my memory is correct, we had head twigs snapping a ways off in the forest; something was obviously being drawn in by the sound of the collision. As much as I wanted to make sure my parents didn’t somehow survive, my instinct took over. I knew that we had to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, because I didn’t want to wait around to see what was coming.

Sadly with that survival instinct I talked about earlier comes both positive and negative effects. For the positive, it keeps you alive. But for the negative, it makes you irrational. I was so panicked that I didn’t grab anything from the wreck. I just grabbed my sister’s arm, because I could see she was still moving, and I dragged her off into the darkening forest aside the road. She was only a year younger than me, and I was sixteen at the time, so I didn’t have to worry too much about her being able to keep up.

Now, at this point in time, people were just starting to abandon their homes, so there was no guarantee of finding a free house to barricade and sleep in for the night. So of course that meant my sister and I were pretty much out of luck. I really didn’t want to risk knocking on the door of someone’s house, because I figured either they may think I’m a zombie or they would just be insane and murder me in my sleep. So pretty much I still had the traditional American mindset about strangers. Battling against that though was my understandable urge to not sleep in the middle of a fucking forest with something obviously running around nearby. As you can imagine, this kind of put me at an internal dilemma and oh yeah, that thing was probably still behind us.

So what did we do? We just ran like hell. There was really nothing else to do, so we kept running until our lungs started to cramp and legs felt like rubber beneath us. I think it was about ten minutes of running, but the traumatic events must have had some influence on my memory, so I can’t guarantee how long it took. All I know is that we were about a twenty minute walk from the car wreck when we came across a church. Like a freakin’ gift from God, the lights of the church were on and there was a group of people who were more than willing to take us in. At first I remember being greeted by an older man, probably in his forties when I banged on the door. His hair was cut pretty short and it was starting to gray around the edges. But most of all, I remember his sharp, accusing eyes, which were diluted by his soft, relaxed face and gentle movements. He always seemed to move as though he was in a dream, yet his eyes never dulled. He was the local pastor though, his name I think was David, ‘though I can’t be sure, and he was the one who welcomed us into that sanctuary.

I think I was more comforted by the church itself than I was the people inside it. Having four walls surrounding me gave me a chance to actually relax and let my senses take a break. The high windows and heavy oak doors also gave me a sense of security, because I doubted anything would be able to climb to the windows or barge though the doors easily. The church wasn’t too large though, and only had about seven benches on each side of an aisle. At the end of the aisle was a little podium thing and to top it off was a cross on the wall. If you couldn’t already tell I was, and still am an atheist. I know the saying goes ‘there are no atheists in the foxholes,’ but what the person who came up with that didn’t consider was, when you’re in the foxhole, you tend to think ‘what kind of a benevolent god would send me into a hell hole like this?’ And so, I’ve never really been able to shake my atheism, aside from what David and all his little disciples said.

But, I’m still summarizing the freakin’ church, so I’ll get that later. As I said, the church was small, but it was large enough to house six families, from what I saw, when we arrived. Those families totaled to about twenty-five people if you include my sister and me. I didn’t get to know everyone there, so I can’t give you an accurate description of all twenty-five, nor would I want to even if I could. The whole goal of my writing is to keep my hands busy and my mind distracted and I find that when I pause to think about what some clothes some person was wearing, who I only knew for about a week, I tend to lose my concentration, and instead focus on the moaning coming from down the street.

I did make one good friend from there though; he name is Josh. I actually think that he’s still alive, although I haven’t seen him in a few months. No guarantees of course, really in the world today the only thing that can be guaranteed is death. But as far as I know he’s still alive somewhere, probably leading a group of survivors or maybe he even carved out a little settlement in the destruction. He always was a good leader, and could always get others to agree. To be honest, I’m not sure if I have any skills like that, because I’ve never tried. Especially under the circumstances today, I don’t want to have a big personality. I’d rather just blend into the shadows then shine brightly for all people, both alive and dead, to see.

Josh was the only one who gave me real comfort there though. The pastor, David, and most of the other people around just handed me a bible or told me to pray, but after we arrived and got situated, Josh was the only one to come over and listen to us. He asked my sister and me what had happened, because he could see that the shock on our faces was not the same as the fright on everyone else’s. After we explained the crash, and how we didn’t even have a chance to look back, he suggested that we make a trip there after we had gotten some sleep.

Of course I was very, very reluctant to go back out, but, as I said, he had a way of convincing people. He was eighteen at the time, so two years older than me, and much more influential upon my terrorized and traumatized mind. Even now I can’t really determine why he wanted so badly to bring me back to the wreck, but he seemed determined on making us go. Alright, actually that’s kind of a lie, because I have a pretty good idea of why, but my laptop’s battery is starting to die, so I didn’t want to take the time to write it. I suppose I’ll go out and look for a new battery now, or maybe see if I can plug a charger in, I think the power-lines on this street are still intact. Regardless, I’m going to draw all the shades and then test out the power. Wish me luck.

Please rate and comment