Maybe I'm the cockroach...

I might be the last person alive on the planet, for all I know, because to even try to make sense of how I survived, just me by myself--most of the time... I don't know how anyone could have done this. Whether it's been luck or just a strong will, I can't even tell you. And... now that I think about it, I don't even know if you are still there. This hasn't stopped. This hasn't improved. About two weeks ago some big hardcore helicopters flew over downtown and rained bullets into the masses of crowded zombies roaming the streets. They looked like ants down there from my window, just a million ants fumbling over each other and cars and curbs, sometimes pushing against each other so hard one of them busts through a storefront window--then that building fills up and the roads are still packed. They flow mindlessly. Soon enough they'll break into my building, too. If my building had windows on the first floor, they'd have gotten through already. But just two sets of solid oak--and seriously boarded-up--doors protect me from them, now. 

I should explain where I've been.

I should have left the apartment after the front gate was busted in. It was stupid of me to think that my situation was somehow going to stay consistent--that living in the comfort of Nicole's apartment would protect me until the invasion was over. Wishful thinking. I had the food and I had the barricade, but the outside world wasn't as lucky. They were all dying--everyone was dying everywhere, all the time, and all those dead people were coming back as zombies. And Santa Rosa might not seem like a busy place when everyone's at work or at home, when society works like a clock and everyone's somewhere. But you get all those people outside at the same time and render them brainless and hungry, and that's a different story. Having underestimated the rising tide of zombies, I thought my barricade would hold. I thought the door with the chair tucked under the knob, that the boarded-up window, and that my escape route were impenetrable. And one night I found out otherwise.

Enough time went by, a lot of people started to get desperate. People started leaving their hiding places and finding cars and making a run for it. I didn't know where they thought they were going. Obviously it would be anyone's last idea to leave their hiding spot, especially if it's gotten them this far. Who knew what life was like out there? Who knew if it was even possible to survive once your first safezone was comprimised? Maybe it was a black and white issue. Either you got infected in the first wave or you didn't, but either way there was no escape. 

Look around. Look at what's happened to the world. It's not getting better.

Like I said, it's remarkable that I'm still alive. I think some part of me was prepared for a situation like this. Maybe I've just been able to stay calm about it. I like to think I've kept a cool head throughout, considering the loss and tragedy of it all. Am I the last person alive in Santa Rosa? Will someone else come knocking at my office door like Nicole did, back at the apartment? Could there be some bank employee wandering the halls looking for his friends? 

How I got to the Bank of America building was by taking the black pick-up truck someone didn't get very far with before being pulled out and torn in half. The keys were still in the ignition when I hopped down to it from the apartment roof and climbed behind the wheel. This truck was big and bulky, so it mowed zombies over with a kinda pleasurable ease, like in a videogame. I drove pretty slow, considering the threat level, but I wanted to stay in control while the tires spun and crunched over bodies. The problem with driving, though, was that many, many people had tried their luck on the roads before me, and many of those vehicles were thrown all over the place like some kid tossing around toys. A lot of the cars were burnt to black charred frames. A lot of their passengers were so dead they were too dead to be zombies. The freeway was impassable. I couldn't even get onto the onramp. So I tried to pass through downtown and take side roads, but there were zombies everywhere. I had no choice but to drive faster when the crowd thickened, and that's what led to me plowing into another car that I didn't see through the fog of wandering corpses. 

Bam, crash... Then I met Tony. 

I should admit that the last person I saw alive was Tony, the guard, who helped me get out of the truck after it crashed. He carried me most of the way and shot zombies away with his shotgun, but couldn't reload it without dropping me--and one of the fuckers grabbed his arm and bit off his fucking fingers. Tony didn't make it up the stairs and he was screaming when they ripped him apart, but right before they yanked him away he ripped the keycard off his belt and gave it to me. So I got inside. The building was fortified. Again, I felt very fortunate. Because at this point I realized that supplies didn't mean shit if you weren't in a safe location. You'd think it was great to be in a grocery store until those front floor-to-ceiling windows buckled from zombie overload and they chase you to the rooftop. Plus, I brought some food in a backpack, some dry food, and that's lasted me a week. 

The elevators don't work and the power is on "auxilary" mode--which I found out when I got into the secuirty offices two days ago--and I can't switch it back to normal. There are ten floors and rooftop access, which is fantastic. I want to find some way to write a "HELP" message up there with office supplies, like duct tape or colored sheets of paper, or maybe hang a banner from some of the top floor windows. Most of the day I watch the video feeds from the outdoor cameras in the security room, now. Before that I lied on my stomach on the edge of the roof and looked down at the zombie hoarde for hours. There were a couple escape attempts where I'd hear a car engine in the distance and watch this visible mowing-down of zombies down the street and follow it until this blood-drenched car comes rampaging along. The engine's had enough, sometimes, and the car dies out and maybe spins and crashes, or maybe comes to a stop and the driver and passengers are eaten alive. Now I just watch the video feeds. It's getting colder outside.

All that to say, I'm still alive. 

And it's anyone's guess what happens next.

Four Week Mark

It's been four weeks, now.

I feel like Cillian Murphy in 28 Days Later, only I haven't been unconscious the whole time.

Going into a coma would be a blessing. I've considered repeatedly choking myself to the point of passing out, over and over, all day... just to pass the time faster. Cable television is out. All the FM stations are gone. Mostly every website is "Down For Repair" or just a regular old 404 message, the blue screen of the internet. Much to my surprise, the lifeblood of the internet hasn't been spilled. It's like the way machines will survive after humans go extinct... The internet lives like a cockroach in the dark. It's almost bothersome that all of humanity can fall apart and things like electricity and the internet will still find a way to survive. Self-sustaining technology is an odd concept to consider.

Not that I'm complaining... I just hope someone can eventually tell me how it worked out this way. Are PG & E employees fending off zombies while bravely upholding their dedication to powering the neighborhood? Maybe... There are still people at the County Dump burning bodies, so maybe that's what we fall back on. Maybe when all the world is gone, we all find some way to build it back. It seems oddly reasonable that a group of dedicated people are keeping the power alive for the rest of us, for the survivors they hope will benefit from their services. Or maybe they don't keep the electricity on for me, or others like me, but for themselves. It might be a kind of grasp on the past that keeps them sane while the future disintegrates. That would be like me going to the coffeeshop and turning on the espresso machine and making mochas.

No thanks. But thanks for the electricity. And the internet.

It's amazing how much pressure I feel, now. There are no other voices coming out of Santa Rosa. No one. I've come across other blogs like this. More than I can read in one day -- and I get the feeling there could be thousands, if not tens-of-thousands, of blogs from survivors. People who are equally glad that their internet stays up. But I'm sure that's not true for everyone -- the internet, I mean. I bet most people have no power. No internet. No water. I forget, sometimes, that not everyone was as lucky as I was. Not everyone has the chance to write very much, either, and a lot of the blogs are one-entry "HELP I'M ALIVE AT THIS LOCATION" posts. None of them are from Santa Rosa. A lot of them are from bigger cities. A lot of them say they were barricaded into quarantine zones -- like I was. A lot of them have missing families. A lot of them are young, too, which I think demonstrates something about the youth culture.

But there's nothing I can do for them. I've sent replies to a lot of them, just saying stuff like "You're not alone," and "I know how you feel." I read this one blog about a thirteen-year-old girl in Oklahoma whose grandparents locked her in the attic (which I guess doubled as a spare bedroom) when zombies broke in to the house. I read a blog about a teenage kid in Boston staying with friends in an RV, and they just ran out of gas a few days ago. I read a blog about office employees trapped on the top floor of a skyscraper, and how three of them chose to jump out the window rather than endure.

Every voice sounds the same. Everyone is as clueless as everyone else. The last bit of real news I remember getting was saying that most of Africa was gone, all of England was evacuated, and something about how sixteen safe zones in Russia were shut down because of an unexpected blizzard. I read about that before Nicole and I went to the prison.

Now, as I've been writing this post and surfing for information at the same time, most of the new stuff I can't read the language, or it's recently posted old news. I get the feeling from the photos and charts that no continent has gone without a major invasion. I want to know what's going on with the government. How are politics going to handle this? It feels like at the very least it would be nice to know who is in charge. It would be nice to know something, for Christ's sake.

It's been a long day.

Oh-- wow. I almost forgot to mention that the front gate was opened two days ago. At around noon I remember leaving the bathroom and hearing the sound of a car engine in the parking lot. So I looked out the window and there was a family -- this family that lives in Apartment 20 -- inside of their blue mini-van. They backed up over one of the zombies, crushing him under the wheels, and then sped off. And I couldn't see from the window because they turned left to follow the parking lot across the complex, but I heard the crash when the driver sped full-force at the gate. There was a delay before that... like a minute of hesitation, which I figured was them trying to use the gate remote. I guess the gate remote wasn't working.

And now there are zombies everywhere. Not much has changed for me, honestly, and so I could care less. I watched them come in. I watched the first wave slowly spread out across the parking lot, bouncing about, not doing anything but seeking open space the way molecules dissipate equally throughout an empty room. That was two days ago. Now there's at least two hundred zombies crowded down there. Sometimes they come up the barricade but they can never get through, so they go back down the stairs. I sat on the roof this morning during the sunrise and watched them. I feel like there are enough of them to lift the whole building and carry me away in their current. Today I also saw them force their way into one of the downstairs apartments in another building -- breaking through a barricade -- and then after a minute of screaming, the people who'd been hiding in there were dead. Or infected.

That's where I'm at now. Four weeks into the invasion. Not much has changed and yet everything is different, you know? If this sounds like I have no hope, then that's true. I have no hope. But I do have a good amount of supplies and that's all that matters. I live hour-by-hour. And at the end of the day, I write it all down in this blog. And so I think I'll just focus on that for a while and maybe pick up another hobby. I could start drawing.

Back Home

With Nicole gone this place feels emptier than it did even before she showed up.

I don't know why I did it, but for some reason I found a couple boxes in Nicole's closet and packed all of her personal stuff away. I marked the box NICOLE'S STUFF and dated it and then wrote, "If you find this box then I guess we failed." I cleared knick-knacks off shelves, paintings off walls, pictures off the refrigerator. All of it is in a box. I erased their answering machine message. I threw away most of their bathroom supplies and saved only the stuff I knew I would use. I had to flush a goldfish down the toilet when it was still alive.

Maybe that's why it feels so empty in here.

I even went through the laptop and erased everything. All the folders and files, the internet bookmarks, cookies, all of it. I changed the desktop wallpaper to a solid shade of gray, which suited my mood. I'll probably find something less depressing, but you don't understand what kind of mood I was in when I got back. I'd never felt so guilty in my life.

The apartments look the same. The front gate is still closed -- as it had been when I saw it with Nicole yesterday -- and the mass of zombies has been mostly restricted to the street. I say 'mostly' because other apartment complexes on my road have been flooded. Ours has yet to have been compromised. The handful of zombies I had seen inside the gates, though, were still wandering around. I kind of saw them as cows on a pasture, lazily lounging about. When they see me -- like the suit-and-tie zombie did -- they speed up a bit and chase after me, but it's been remarkably easy to out-pace them. So I climbed back up the stairs and over the barricade and up onto the rooof.

And before I even went into Nicole's place, I went to get the bong and the weed from my loft. I cut myself on some glass I hadn't knocked out of the frame, but it was nothing bad. Nicole had a box of band-aids in the bathroom. So I also grabbed batteries, blankets, pillows, more clothes. I grabbed all the rest of my bathroom stuff, too, like my electric razor and hair gel and soap and cologne. I grabbed some of my towels and my shampoo. A pack-rat. This stuff made me feel comfortable. I was already planning on emptying Nicole's presence out of her apartment, so I needed things to fill the empty space with.

Now I think I'm going to just stay here. I have lost all motivation to leave the apartment. I have food and supplies. I have electricity. I have the internet. I have running water. So there's really no reason for me to do anything but wait. My mom and sister are in some bunker somewhere in Tahoe -- or was it Reno? -- and I still haven't heard from my dad or Belen or anyone. It's like now I'm not only alone, but I'm completely alone -- like last-person-alive-on-the-planet alone.

As always, I'm just going to end with the idea that this could be my last posting. My name is Chris Fryer. I am not infected. I am alone and in a safe location. I'm at 2323 Winston Road #5, Santa Rosa CA.

Please send someone.

The Prison

Nicole didn't make it.

I don't know what else to say about that. I don't want to talk about what I saw, just know that she was very brave for trying to find her boyfriend and it should be remembered that she did not go down without a fight. I don't know what my words can do for those who knew Nicole, if any of those people are still alive. I'm sure she's spared herself an increasingly bleak-looking future. If this is the world she leaves behind -- perhaps, even, to join her boyfriend in heaven -- then she isn't missing out on much. Although I haven't put it out of my head that I'll see zombie-Nicole on my way out of the prison tomorrow.

When the sun comes up I'll have the courage to leave. Until then the two tall filing cabinets, heavy black-lacquered wooden desk, and overturned desk-chairs will protect me from the shuffling horde of zombies in the hallways. When Nicole and I got the prison -- after crossing the freeway, another story entirely -- we didn't find a whole lot of hope. The parking lot was littered with bodies, garbage, and the crispy skeletons of burnt cars withering in the wind. Lots of prisoners meandered around, zombies, probably escaped from their cells during an attempted evacuation or an exceptionally violent riot. Maybe someone was visited by an infected spouse and they shared a viral kiss. Then that prisoner converts overnight and eats his cellmate's brains, then attacks the guards the next morning when their gunshots are ineffective. Let that ensuing outbreak spread through the prison and spill out into the neighborhood, and you have the scene that Nicole and I came across. We snuck in through an emergency exit door held ajar by a dead body and saw more of the same inside -- hallways crowded with zombies bumping into each other, moaning.

I don't know what Nicole was thinking. If she thought Steven would be the only guy who managed to survive this place -- like he found a closet somewhere, or a big vent to hide in. But there wasn't a living person to be seen anywhere. And we even got into the security room and checked all the working closed-circuit feeds. Zombies everywhere. Blood, guts, body parts... The closed-circuit televisions are off now, each screen reflecting a washed-out image of me, because I don't want to see anymore. Nicole and I figured out how to barricade the room, thinking that we'd both be staying in this room tonight. We'd decided it was the strongest room in the whole building because it only had one entrance and the windows -- one way mirrors, really -- were thick and bulletproof. From the second floor, the windows look down at the tables and benches where inmates have supervised visits from guests. If I were to look again I'm sure it would be the same twenty zombies locked in that room because none of the six zombie guards has the cognitive awareness to slide a keycard through a door scanner and twist a doornob. With the way things looked when I was on the outside and knowing how hopeless it appeared inside, too, I don't know what drove Nicole to make one last search for Steven.

I turned on the closed-circuit monitors to watch her. I won't tell you what I saw happen.

After that I barricaded the door again. Now I'm sitting at the desk in front of eight blank television screens and this glowing laptop. I moved the computer that was here before me and stole its Ethernet cable for internet access. First thing I did this time was check my e-mail. No messages. No sign that anyone but me has survived. Remember Belen? I'm assuming her and her family were eaten weeks ago. I feel like she would have called me if they'd had an escape plan, too, because I know that we're better friends than that. She wouldn't ditch me here. But while that thought is comforting, it also means that she's probably dead.

Or a zombie.

Worldwide news is grim, too. Not just the alarming amount of outbreaks registered within the past five hours, but the list of fully-evacuated cities, an estimate of which cities will soon be evacuated, and a quickly diminishing list of safe-zones categorized by location. Reliable sources of information are starting to drop off. Websites are being updated slowly. Nothing I looked at online was published in the United States since last Sunday. Almost a week ago. And everything the overseas articles are addressing, I remember reading about when the invasion began here. Tips for what to do, where to go, who to contact... Information that sounds good on paper and matters so little once you spend your first sleepless night listening to the endless moaning, that collective cry for a bite of human brains.

I want to think I'll meet Steven someday. Maybe he did survive. And I'll be able to tell him about when I met Nicole and how much she loved him and how she died in the quest to reunite with him. That's love. That's a good love story. But I don't get my hopes up anymore.

Not all has been for naught, however. A locker in the back of the security room had four pump-action shotguns and four handguns and two big automatic rifles. All these weapons, metal-black and shiny, with cases of bullets for each on the shelf below. I'm intimidated more by the shotgun than the rifle, but know in some part of my brain that I'll rather have the blast-radius of the shotgun than the rapid recoil-crazed firing of an automatic rifle. I found a bag and put two handguns in there with all the bullets. All the shotgun shells. I found a vest that lets me strap the shotgun across my back like a real-life action movie star. I have to assume that what I've see on television is as easy as it looks. Pump to load, squeeze trigger to fire... How to reload the thing, I'm still not sure. It didn't come with a manual.

Tomorrow I'm making a break for home. Or, well, I'll probably go back to Nicole's apartment. There's food and shelter waiting for me there. Peace and quiet from the echoing murmur of a hundred lost souls. It was a bad idea to come out here. It was. No one's going to say it was all worth it because I came back with weapons. Nicole died when she didn't have to. And I can't help but feel a little responsible for that. Survivor's guilt starts quick when your mind is working ten times as fast as normal. It also passes quickly. You see enough death in one day and it'll never bother you again, you become detached. It's been five hours since Nicole went out there. I went through all the five stages of grief before sunset. Now I'm just thinking about tomorrow, about what might happen. I think about all the abandoned cars on the freeway and I wonder if any of them might have gas left in them. The commuter zombies bouncing around the parked cars weren't much of a threat on the way across because there were enough cars to leap from hood-to-hood or roof-to-roof, like crossing a river by a trail of rocks.

I need to get some rest. I must get some rest.

Nicole's Plan

I asked if Nicole wanted to write anything to her parents, or to her boyfriend, in case they might read this blog. But she said that no one would read it. So then I told her that someone in the future might read it, that it might be a useful record for them. She told me it was a stupid idea. I think her mind is mostly occupied with thoughts of her boyfriend, anyway. That's all she's been talking about for the past two days. I found out that her boyfriend, Steven, was supposed to be let out of jail the day of the invasion, the 6th. What she keeps going on about is how the jail is literally just across the freeway and how he still never made it home -- not even after twenty-one days. She thinks his bus or taxi got attacked.

She also thinks Steven is still alive.

The past two days with Nicole have been odd. It's always weird to go from a period of isolation to a period of social interaction. Especially when most of the time I haven't felt comfortable in her apartment, now that she's home, although I don't think she minds the company. We talk about more than her lost boyfriend, too. I found out she was from Arizona, originally, and moved to Santa Rosa about two years before. "Following the popular kids," she explained. I told her about where I'd come from. We talked about our summers before the invasion started. She said she was planning on going to Hawaii with Steven on September 3rd (she showed me their plane tickets, too) and then got upset about that and cried for a while.

I haven't cried once during this experience. Is that bad?

Enough times goes by and you stop hoping for rescue, you stop thinking everything will work itself out. But then you reach a point where you start to move forward along this new path. There's no way the world can recover from this. No way. So, knowing that, I think I've started to accept that. For now I'm taking care of me and mine until some form of structured reality comes back to this society. Because right now there are no rules. There are no laws. Nicole hasn't realized that, yet, as she's been using the internet to send out e-mails to people who won't respond, trying to call people on a phone with no signal, and otherwise totally ignoring the fact that the existence we knew before will never come back.

There is no more television. The power went out for three hours during the hottest part of yesterday. The food supplies are taking a hit, but persisting. I still think we've got enough food for a month's time, minimum, and that's with two people. The zombies who saw us from below made it to the top of the stairs and then stumbled back down, I guess, because I haven't seen or heard them since Nicole arrived. Otherwise there has been little going on. Nicole's been smoking a lot of cigarettes and that makes me think about the pot I left in my apartment -- and I'm almost tempted to go back for it.

Before she went to bed, Nicole looked at me and said, "I'm going to go look for him tomorrow. I can't keep waiting. Every day I wait... I need to find him, even if he's dead." Although she got choked up on "dead," I know that she meant it. I don't want to go with her. I don't think it's a good idea at all. But there's also no way I'll let her go by herself. She set an alarm clock for 5:00, just before sunrise, and she wants to pack some food and supplies and leave early.

You'll know why I don't post anything after this -- worst case scenario.

Nicole

You're not going to believe this. I still don't believe it, either.

At around six o'clock I was cooking up spaghetti in the kitchen -- still in #5 -- and listening to this iPod I found in the desk drawer, and someone starts pounding on the window. I get scared so bad that I knock the pot of boiling water off the stove and it splashes wet noodles all over the linoleum -- burns the shit out of my legs -- and I throw the iPod away and run for the nearest weapon, the broom. Then this woman starts yelling, "Mark! Mark! Mark!" and yanking on the doorknob like a maniac. She's crying hysterically. The longer I stand there in the kitchen with the broom, the less powerful her pounding becomes... the louder her tears become. And right when I think she's done, she comes back full-force shouting, "Who's in there! God damnit! Get out of my fucking apartment!"

So mostly because she was making so much noise, but also because it felt wrong to keep her out of her own apartment, I took the chair away from the doorknob. I replaced the broom with the kitchen-knife, too, and held it pointed toward her when I opened the door. She burst in so quickly that she nearly got herself stabbed. I remember her looking at me for a split-second when the door was opening, but as soon as she could fit through the frame she was sprinting toward me -- she tackled me backward over the couch. Now she was screaming, "Where the fuck is Mark? Where the fuck is my boyfriend?"

I wrestled away from her and held the knife out -- and I don't think she'd noticed the knife until then, because she stepped away from me when she saw it. She asked me who I was and I told her I was Chris Fryer and that I lived in apartment #1 and that I'd dropped down from the roof. She settled down a little and apologized, told me her name was Nicole. She noticed the spaghetti noodles on the floor and apologized for messing up my dinner. I said, "I'm sorry for using your stuff," and she said, "I'm glad I could help." After that I asked her if she wanted me to leave. It seemed a little weird to stick around after wrestling... Nicole's pink t-shirt was dirty with sweat and blood and -- I think -- smears of grease. She looked, as much as any person can look, completely exhausted. For a while she just leaned back against the countertop and stared down at the floor. Then she started cleaning the mess. I watched.

But when she went to go fix the barricade, I joined in and helped. We didn't say anything to each other. She never answered my question. Unfortunately we noticed that a zombie had spotted us and was shuffling our way. I followed her back inside and we blocked the door with a chair and a heavy bookcase -- which I guess meant she didn't want me to leave. Nicole asked me what I thought we could do about the window and I didn't have any suggestions. She said we could probably take down the closet door. I said yeah, probably. So we did.

Now there's a closet door nailed up over the window. It doesn't block it entirely, but we used enough nails to protect against a hurricane. She didn't say anything to me until we'd finished the work and she was sitting on the carpet with a beer in her hands. She said, "I stayed in the car as long as I could. I was coming back from the store." I asked her if she drove here and she said she had gotten into an accident on the way and the car rolled into a creek off the road. I felt bad that she'd spent almost three weeks in a car while I'd been sleeping inside in a bed. She said, "Don't be sorry. You're lucky, that's all. Good timing." Then I asked her where her boyfriend might be and she started to cry and so we didn't talk about that anymore.

After a while she realized that I was carrying around Mark's laptop in Mark's backpack and she asked me about it. I told her about this blog. She read what I'd written. I don't think Nicole sees the significance of keeping a record like this. But I suppose your mind is in a different place after three weeks in the back of a Toyota Camry. Like a wild dog meeting a tamed dog -- I get the feeling we're not going to agree on many things. Nicole stayed up almost all night sitting by the window with the kitchen-knife in case the zombies broke through. I set up a bed with blankets on the floor downstairs (obliged to give the bed back to its rightful owner) and helped Nicole upstairs -- she was starting to complain about feeling really sore all over, probably from running across town to get home.

And that's what happened today.

Apartment #5

I found a decent laptop in one of the apartments and I'm writing this blog entry from the rooftop of my apartment complex. I'm picking up on someone's wi-fi signal. So the good news, then, is that I'm still alive and I found a laptop and so I can keep updating everyone on where I am. The internet is really my last connection to the world. At least if I stay in range of someone's wireless connection. And that's good. For me. I was going to have to think of some other hobby to help pass the time.

The window was easy enough to break. I don't know how many zombies looked up at the roof when I threw the hammer through it, but by the time I squeezed between and over the broken glass and got to my feet on the slanted rooftop, almost all of them were stumbling toward me. And there are a lot of zombies in the street -- outside the fence -- probably even more than I expected. It didn't surprise me like I thought it would. I've seen more zombies in scenes from Dawn of the Dead. We're talking maybe sixty zombies scattered around the parked cars. I spent a while sitting on the roof watching them meander around. They have very short attention spans. Most of them are just really pale-looking people with gruesome wounds splattered with dried blood. It's like that old saying that we're all equal in death, everyone looks the same. I watched a guy (looked like he used to be a cop) dragging around the upper torso of another guy because they were attached at the wrist by hand-cuffs. I saw a zombie still sitting in her parked car, just staring forward through the windshield, while her nose-less zombie baby was scratching at the window. I scanned the street up and down with binoculars I took from my junk-drawer. Each zombie had some story to tell: the old guy with a bread knife stuck in his shoulder, the teenager wearing a Jack in the Box uniform with a bloody stump where his arm should be, the business woman who carried around and gnawed on a human leg. Those are some I remember. Now that it's night, it's much harder to see details. Now the zombies are a shapeless, morphing form.

What happened after I got onto the roof is I examined the road and then went to see if any zombies were inside the gate, if they were walking around the resident parking lot. I counted six when I first looked early this morning. Then at around 3:00 I came back to the roof and counted four. And I also couldn't make it all the way across the complex to where I could check if the front-gate was closed. There are curved pathways and tall oak trees that split the complex into five seperate structures, cutting me off from most of the other apartments. The zombies wandering around the parking lot might have come in through the gate -- though if it's been open for nineteen days I would expect more -- or they could be residents who wandered out of their homes.

From the roof I can get into seven apartments in my building, if I wanted to, but only two of those are upstairs only -- which is as far as my bravery is willing to take me -- while two others are downstairs only and the other four are two-story lofts, like mine.

So of the two upstairs apartments, the first one I checked out was #5, but the door was locked. Didn't know what else to do but knock, and then I waited scared out of my mind -- the sun was just coming up over the parking lot and I didn't want to be spotted. No one answered the door. So then I tested to see if the window could be slid open and, thankfully, it wasn't latched. The window opened without a problem. This first apartment was empty. Locked, but empty. I looked in every corner of that place -- and it was small, so it didn't take long -- and there were no people. I think the residents probably made a run for it. Or maybe they weren't home when the invasion started and simply never made it back. There is only one framed photo on the wall of a young man and wife (presumably) who could have lived here. Before I felt safe scrounging through this apartment for supplies, though, I moved some of their heavier furniture in front of the staircase leading down to the pathway. I moved their couch and a big wicker chest onto the balcony. This was also how I got back onto the roof... But anyway I grabbed the laptop off the desk and a backpack to carry it with. I checked their kitchen for food and found plenty. A well-stocked refrigerator. Lots of dry food in the cabinets. They don't have the nice TV that I do, but that's okay because only three self-sustaining television channels are still on the air, plus that CNN channel they started up from one of the safe-zones in New York that has been repeating the same information for three or four days since it started up.

I had to drop down to a different balcony on the other side of the building to get to the second apartment. The door was locked and I still felt like I had to knock before trying the window. I knock and wait a minute and then this young kid comes bumping up against the window. He has no fingers on his two hands and one of his eyeballs was twisted askew like someone hit him really hard against the side of the head. I stepped back and watched him watching me, putting his mouth against the window and screeching his teeth against the glass. I watched him for a while. And then I realized that his moaning was drawing the attention of the zombies from the parking lot -- all of a sudden I turned around and two of them were trying to climb the staircase. I recognized one of the guys as my neighbor who I'd never met, the skateboarder. He was missing a lot of the skin from his legs and I could literally see his knee working as it attempted to maneuver the steps. So I just climbed back onto the roof and forgot about that apartment.

I figure this new apartment -- Apartment #5 -- has enough supplies to keep me alive for a long time. Months, even. You can't even beleive how happy it made me feel to open the refrigerator. To find the laptop. To have some good luck tossed my way. I mean, seriously, this place has a collection of movies, books, and stacks of old magazines in the bathroom. It has a big ready-made bed with soft blankets and pillows. The staircase is blocked off with furniture, and the furniture gives me quick access to the rooftop. What I didn't find, however, were any weapons. Nothing better than a kitchen knife and a plunger. I'm not about to fight a zombie with a kitchen knife, though, so until I get my hands on a real gun I don't think I'll even worry about that second apartment. I get the feeling I won't need anything I'd find in there, anyway. Something about killing someone -- even a zombie -- still seems beyond me.

That all said, I think I'll go back inside. It's been getting colder at night. I'm feeling so happy for myself that I might take a shower, too. Imagine real hot water in a time like this.

Until next time...

Mom Called

I just got off the phone with my mom. They're being evacuated this afternoon and taken to some place in Tahoe -- taken by bus, she said. She said she would call as soon as they got settled in, but not to expect her to call until tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm glad that she's being taken somewhere safe -- her and my younger sister, Loren. She couldn't say much more about what was happening but I've been reading on the internet about outbreaks in Sacramento that got beyond old quarantine barriers. I guess they thought they had the virus contained, but... It just started moving up Interstate 80 toward Roseville, Auburn... There were stories coming from Roseville about zombies attacking the Galleria Mall. I couldn't help but think about Dawn of the Dead. Anyway, I thought that was worth sharing. In case anyone might be reading.

Meanwhile, though, I haven't gotten an e-mail from my dad in a while. Or a call, although even during a zombie invasion I think we'd rather just e-mail each other. He's been living down toward Palo Alto, which is below San Francisco... I know San Francisco was quarantined but I'm not sure if that extended down to him. There's no way to know. I've already spent enough time imagining what might have happened.

Other than the phonecall, nothing much has happened this morning. My stomach won't stop grumbling because I'm starving. I'll probably have to eat something soon. I could just get totally wasted off the rest of the rum and pass out. It would be a quick way to make the day go by. It's getting harder to resist letting myself get really trashed. I've always been a calm guy -- and one of the things that keeps me the calmest is writing, which is good -- but being stuck in here for fourteen days is incredibly aggravating. And it doesn't help that the power went out for a while last night while I was sleeping. My alarm clock was flashing 12:00 when I woke up. So who knows how long electricity is going to last? I'll be cut off from my information sources. I'll be like that guy in that Twilight Zone episode who survives the nuclear blast and then breaks his glasses. Maybe not that severe. If the power goes out, then that's a sign it's time for me to move on.

I just realized that if the power does go out, I could probably make it to the library across the street. If they still had power then I could use their computers. And a library sounds like a place that people might go to for safety. Though... this long after the quarantine... I don't think a person could survive in the library. There might be snack machines though. I don't remember if there are snack machines in that library or not. And, also, worst case scenario is that everyone inside is already a zombie.

And using a computer in another apartment in my complex wouldn't work because if the power goes out in my apartment, it'll be out in all of the others, too. Or so I'd imagine. But I shouldn't really base my escape plan on whether or not they have a computer. I need to go somewhere high up -- like the second floor of somewhere -- and with food and supplies. I'm still thinking I'll try to make it to Belen's parents' house in Fountain Grove. But I still haven't heard from Belen. She won't respond to any voicemails or text messages. And no one else from work has called me back. None of my friends from school, either. All the hope I have is split between meeting up with Belen and investigating the fires at the County Dump.

Both seem equally impossible. But my hunger says otherwise.

What Happens Next

I thought for sure that the internet was gone forever when I woke up this morning and my modem was flashing that one light, the light I never want to see blinking by itself. And it was like that for almost all day. I unplugged it and plugged it back in over and over, too, just in case it was the modem's fault. I don't remember what I thought had happened... I figured the cable had been severed somewhere, like some zombie had chewed into a wire. Or maybe that magical land of super-computers that powers the internet was abandoned, or destroyed. But it persists, apparently. Like some bacteria that can endure even the harshest environment. I don't know why the internet is still working and I don't know for how long it will keep breathing, but I couldn't tell you how happy I was when the other modem lights flickered on. First thing I did after checking the news was check my e-mail.

I got this from my mom:

Hey Chris. We love you. We're in Tahoe. No phones. Love you. I love you Chrissy--Loren. Bye.

Still no e-mail from my dad. No e-mails from my old highschool friends, either. Not even on Facebook, which has been disturbingly quiet for the past two days. There were nothing but IS EVERYONE OKAY? and WHERE ARE YOU? posts from friend to friend to friend. I've been searching public forums for anyone saying they're in Santa Rosa. There have been a few, but none of them responded to my messages. I get the feeling that most people are being a lot more active and productive during this disaster -- like trying to get to their families, trying to gather supplies, trying to help each other -- while I stick to my "wait it out" approach. So I'm not surprised to not hear back from people.

Also, it's been seventeen days. The news reports I'm reading now are coming from England and China (translated, of course) because most of the American sites aren't being updated anymore. I've been reviewing this timeline of events that BBC News put up that traces the invasion back to the meteor in Guerneville. This is how they described the event:

"...struck the earth outside of Guerneville, CA (population 2,441) on March 3 and was an event promptly obscured from the American media. Through information leaked on the internet the meteor was revealed to be the size of a shopping cart; it is made of a rough and porous element, slate-gray with a slight shine; the meteor was taken to a research facility in Humboldt County for further sampling. Witnesses claimed a gas escaped from the meteor after it landed which infected anyone nearby, explaining how the virus initially began airborne..."

It's strange to think that I live so close to where this all began.

So then the timeline goes day by day. The next stages show the virus spreading from river-going tourist towns to bigger cities like San Francisco, Sebastapol, and Santa Rosa -- my hometown. Sonoma County, overall, escalated from a Level Zero to a Level Five in less than four days. After that the military was quarantining sections of California. San Francisco was evacuated. Los Angeles, San Diego... By the tenth day they were showing outbreaks in Chicago, New Orleans, and Miami. Now, on the sixteenth day, most overseas websites have painted the United States red and show blotches of red showing up on the other continents. They say that England saw its first outbreak at London Heathrow Airport and it simply skipped from one hospital to the next, people not handling the situation the right way, taking the virus further into the country. But apparently the British military has the situation fairly-well contained, unless that's just the impression they want to give.

I'm out of food.

I haven't broken through that upstairs window yet for two reasons. One, I didn't want to make any noise that would get me noticed when I had no need to reveal my hiding spot. Two, I didn't know what I'd accomplish by getting onto the roof. Access to other apartments, maybe. Even then, some apartments might have zombies in them. It didn't seem like a good idea. Or I mean it didn't sound like a smart idea at the time, when I had food, when I felt like I was safe here.

But now that I don't have food, I've changed my mind. I'm not going to run for my car. That was one idea. I could make it to Safeway. Hell, I'd at least make it to the gas station around the corner... But I think that if I'm going to make anything my first attempt, it'll be trying the rooftop. Plus I'll finally get to see how bad the situation really is. I'll be embarassed if there are like five zombies on the street... Considering how loud the moaning has gotten at night, though, and how much it smells like a compost heap outside, I'd say that the amount of zombies might rival the audience of a small concert. And even if I am spotted -- or smelled -- then I'll still have the second-story height advantage. So no one can really say that I'm doing the wrong thing. It's impressive enough that I've even built up the courage to try something like this. Part of me was tempted to just stay here. So what I'm doing is a big step for me and I'm sorry if I'm not the brave go-getter type trying to escape the city barricades. I just want to survive.

I'm going to break the window tomorrow morning. If I don't leave another message, it'll either be because I:

1. Found an empty apartment with better supplies.
2. Found survivors.
3. Got eaten.
4. The internet finally went down.

So that's it for tonight. I've eaten all my food supplies and had my last-meal bowl of maple oatmeal just an hour ago. The internet says I'll make it without food for 4 to 6 weeks. I'll find water, for sure, even if I end up coming back to my apartment. The tap has been running clean water for the last seventeen days. I'm also not sure how long that will last, either... Let alone this electricity... But I'm just saying that I've got 4 to 6 weeks to find some food. Maybe in the meantime I'll find another computer.

But if you don't hear from me again, then thanks for reading.

Eleven Days

I put off smoking marijuana for eleven days. Before tonight, I hadn't touched a pipe or a lighter in eleven days and I think I deserve some kind of award for that. Because I have to be honest with you -- I might be starving, and I might smell like yesterday's trash -- but there's really nothing for me to be worried about. I'm not making any trips outside until I have to. Until the military knocks on the my door and offers me a helicopter ride. So all day I sit on my ass in this hot apartment, alone, watching movies and stumbling online. Three days ago I'm sure I heard at least six gunshots, a couple sirens, and maybe two helicopters or planes. Yesterday there were even fewer. Today I heard one gunshot and it sounded like it came from across the street. I haven't heard a siren since yesterday, or anything in the sky. The city is getting quieter. The moaning is getting louder.

So I'm not stoned, just so we're clear. I took a few hits and stopped. I'm willing to relax but I'm not willing to be eaten alive -- so I'll keep some wits about me. I do feel better. Not going to lie. It's been stressful. I've been spending more time listening to the wall that connects to my neighbors' apartment, just trying to hear something new. I mentioned that I heard them bumbling around and smacking the wall (after not hearing anything for almost a week), and since then they've been quiet. I peek out the upstairs window to see if anyone else has posted a sign in their upstairs windows, although I can only see two others from my position and both of those windows looked blocked off with curtains or sheets, like mine had been. That reminds me... I saw this fire, this smoke, off in the distance billowing up from the horizon. Big clouds of black smoke. I thought I could even see the tips of flames. I'm not sure what that's all about but I hope the fire doesn't spread toward me. The sky was an orange-gray hue for most of the day -- a perfect sky for Halloween trick-or-treating. But what I was going to say when I first started this paragraph was that I'm not stoned, I'm just a little high, and that's okay because I think I deserve it for being so level-headed the past ten days.

Ten fucking days.

I heard on the news that San Francisco was successfully evacuated. All the survivors got out, at least. They didn't talk much about the outbreaks. I had to hear about that from blogs on the internet. People from San Francisco who saw it happen. Whoever was left in the city has turned into a zombie by now. I get chills just thinking about an empty Van Ness with zombies shuffling around. Walking around the beaches getting knocked over by waves, getting up, getting knocked down again... Bumping into cars and setting off alarms that echo forever between the darkened skyscrapers. Just the zombies and the rats left to scrounge the street for scraps. I think they put up barricades around the city limits like they did with my quarantine zone. I imagine tanks and military personnel guarding the Golden Gate Bridge. I imagine them shooting zombies that try to cross. Bodies piling up. They burn the bodies in a pile of corpses.

Maybe that's what the smoke is coming from. Burning all the zombies. I'd heard that fields were being used to burn up large piles of dead bodies. Hundreds of them, sometimes, depending on how big of an outbreak was had. I know that the County Dump outside of Petaluma -- just within the quarantine line -- was supposed to be where the bodies around here were taken. I think I caught that on the news. I remember my mom asking me if the County Dump Station was a safe place I could go and I told her, "No, that's where they're burning the bodies."

So maybe that's what I'm seeing. They're burning bodies at the Dump. I hadn't really thought about it until now because I was just peeking through the window before lighting up -- and ten days without smoking... I was high as a kite for a moment there, and I forgot all about the fire I saw until writing this blog. Anyway -- what I'm thinking now is that some survivors must have gotten to the Dump because someone had to start that fire. Google maps says that the dump is about 16 or 17 miles from here, taking the freeway south. But just like Belen being ten minutes away in Fountain Grove and the gunshop being on the other side of the mall and my car only fifteen yards from my door on the other side of the fence... nothing outside of my apartment could exist, for all I know. I'm stuck here. I'm stuck here until I'm desperate enough to run for the next apartment and pray someone human answers the door. Desperate enough to run for my car and see how far a nearly-empty tank can get me. To the Dump? Maybe. To Belen? She hasn't called me back in three days.

This is what I have left for food: 2 slices of bread, one package of pasta noodles, 1/2 bottle of rum, 1 bottle kahlua, salsa, one package of oatmeal, three sticks of butter.

It seems like I've used up a lot in four days, but I didn't have much to begin with. Half the stuff I mentioned before was already opened or used. I can't predict how long I can make this food last. The pasta could go for five, six days... If I have one meal a day. I can push the bread for another two days after that, but I'll have to just eat spoonfuls of salsa with it or it won't fill me up. The alcohol seems counter-productive, but drinking positively raises my spirit while distracting me from the hunger. Getting high was a bad idea, too, because I made myself a peanut butter sandwich that cost me the last of my PB and two slices of bread. I'll save the oatmeal. It's maple flavored -- my favorite because it reminds me of childhood -- and that'll be my last meal. Then I'll have to figure out what to do next.

But I've never been one to plan out my life and I'm not about to start now.

I'm glad that even though Santa Rosa is under zombie invasion, the sprinkler system of my apartment complex still runs like clockwork. At 2:45 AM the jets outside of my apartment turn on. It's a static sound, a streaming hiss, but it blocks out the moaning from the zombies on the street. It's also the only time I can peacefully fall asleep, when I can pretend like nothing's wrong. I heard on the news that outbreaks are showing up in Denver, Las Vegas, Houston, and Oklahoma City. People are carrying it by car. By plane. Pretty soon it'll be across the ocean. The virus will spread. We've all seen it happen in the movies. And those viruses in the movies weren't always based off fictional concepts. Any virus can spread quickly given the right conditions. And I don't know if anyone knows what this virus even is, having come from a meteor for crying out loud. Maybe there's a second even worse stage that comes after someone turns into a zombie.

That's the shit I think about when I fall asleep to the drone of them moaning. So I'm going to call it a night and pass out while the sprinkler is on. Night.

The Meteor

I won't lie and say that I'm not basing all of my knowledge of zombies off movies and videogames. What else am I supposed to learn tactics from? I've watched Dawn of the Dead three times since last Wednesday. And you might think, "Isn't that like watching Snakes on a Plane on a plane?" and I would argue otherwise. There's nothing more helpful in this situation than desensitization, in my opinion. The more I see Ving Rhames shotgun a motherfucker in the face, the better I'll feel if I eventually need to shotgun a motherfucker. But basically what I'm trying to say right now is that I really have no idea how these things are going to act. Do they look like zombies? Yes. Are they walking around all slow-like and moaning? Yes. Do they eat other people? Yes. Are they people who were once dead and are now walking around aimlessly? Yes.

But then I think about how this started. The meteor. What kind of meteor brings a virus that turns people into the undead? I'm thinking about the movie Slither and how that meteor was carrying a kind of slug that found a host. Then that one host spawned more slugs and those slugs took over more people and the host contolled them telephathically. But I couldn't tell you if that's what was happening here or not. A zombie is what a zombie is. And these ones, from what I saw on the earlier news reports and from just outside on the street, these ones don't run as fast as they do in Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead," but linger around like the ones from Romero's original. I own both of those movies. I've also been watching Shaun of the Dead to see the humor in all of this.

So I wanted to research the meteor that landed near Guerneville -- near the river, I heard -- and I couldn't find anything on the internet. They've taken the reports down. All of them. I get 404 messages when I go to bookmarked pages I distinctly remember reporting on the incident. Now there's nothing to read. Not even Wikipedia has anything on it. The Santa Rosa Police Department website has been temporarily unavailable for two days. The public library website has been replaced with the static message: STAY INSIDE WITH YOUR FAMILY AND WAIT FOR RESCUE. I've bookmarked that page and I find myself reading that message a few times every hour. I'm glad someone put that message there, like a candle in the dark...

I couldn't find out anything about the meteor. What I remember from the first report was that it came down around noon on Sunday, August 3rd. First witnesses said it landed near the river -- a busy tourist day, too -- in a secluded area of the woods. Curious people went to investigate and apparently the meteor was letting out a gas of some kind -- people compared it to the smell of burnt popcorn -- and whoever breathed it would instantly choke and die. Big groups of people were taken to the nearest hospital. Then the story was let out. I heard about it when customers came into work Monday morning talking about the meteor. And when I went to watch the news when I got home, the new story was about the riot at the Guerneville hospital, and the more I listened the more I knew this was not a regular event. All the rioters had been previously dead bodies closed away in the morgue.

By chance, however, I did find this short video on the internet. I get the impression that the people on the video did not survive, seeing as they were evidently sitting near the meteor crash-site. It's a bit rough, but the video takes a disturbing twist at the end. I wonder how quickly the virus takes over a person. Perhaps it depends on the dose.




That's all for now. I'm going back to playing Resident Evil 4.

What Quarantine Means

My mother can't get it into her head that I'm trapped in my apartment. So far as I know -- I'm trapped. She refuses to believe that I can't go out to my car with an overnight bag and flock home to safety. Not only would going outside give away my position (I'm literally fifteen feet from the fence) but my Jeep is low on fuel. Not to mention that Santa Rosa is under a complete quarantine. I didn't see it happen because it happened overnight, but I've seen pictures and video on the news showing the police barricades. They've shut down the freeway as far north as River Road and as far south as Petaluma. Here's a map they've been using a lot on most websites:

That big red circle is where I live. Napa's under Code Orange and they've started to quarantine Vallejo, which looks like Code Pink. I've been watching the evacuation of San Francisco on the news, too, and you might think that looks like a chaotic mess, but at least San Francisco got a warning. At least they have a chance to escape. Escape to where? I don't know. That's another thing my mom keeps asking me about: Where To Go. I'm looking on the internet for safe locations I might eventually run for, but there's nothing for me. Santa Rosa is, literally, totally cut off from the rest of the world. I haven't seen footage filmed anywhere within thirty miles because of the military blockades. They have -- Mom, I'm trying to be clear about this for you -- made it impossible for anything to enter or leave the city. And no, I don't know how long it'll take for them to "clean up" because I don't know if it's getting any better. Every hour I check the news and it seems like another city has to be evacuated. Or another colored ball shows up on the zombie radar and -- in the back of my mind -- I know that with each new outbreak goes a little of my hope of being rescued. Do you know how busy the police are? How unprepared we were for this? If I want to get rescued, it's going to be from my own efforts. But you need to remember that I can't leave my apartment without getting killed, so the whole idea of escape is kind of a painful illusion, these days, in case you haven't been noticing that the world is falling apart.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I'm going to do the best I can with what I can. My parents need to stop calling me, stop telling me what I should be doing, and just let me figure this out. I've gone for a week without freaking out and talking to them is making me feel a little crazy. I get voicemail messages from my father and he thinks he's figured out a way to kill all the zombies, some secret method he saw on The History Channel... And I just shake my head and think, "They're zombies, dad. You shoot them in the head." But shooting requires weaponry that I don't have and my father seems to think I can pull out some magic carpet and ride over the mall to that gunstore on Cleveland Avenue. Yeah right.

I'm feeling a little bitter today. Did all of that sound bitter? I guess I woke up in a funk after yesterday. Nothing much happened yesterday. Mostly I sat around being hungry. I crunched up half of the last Top Ramen packet and ate it dry. I watched all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies -- even the third one -- and then played a good amount of Guitar Hero. You want to know what it's like? It's like I'm on summer vacation and I don't have a job, but I'm also the laziest motherfucker you've ever met. For eight days I've really done nothing at all. I haven't boarded up the windows. I haven't showered. I haven't even slept all that much. I walk around this apartment like a ghost. My body feels weak. I'm thinking about watching the first season of Lost on DVD. Maybe tomorrow.

It's not even 11:00 AM yet.

I still hear helicopters fly by once a day. I was upstairs this morning when I heard one and happened to catch a glimpse of it through the upstairs window, the one I blocked off with a sheet because it let in so much sun. I climbed up on a desk to take down the sheet and that's when I saw that the window looks over the slanted rooftop of my neighbor's apartment. If I were to remove the glass, I'd be able to climb outside and be at a safe and unreachable height. From what I could tell, the rooftop connecting my apartment with the rest of the complex was one continuous surface, which gave me hope that I could find a way to connect with some other survivors holed up in their apartment. I imagined a kind of scene where instead of taking the footpaths from one apartment to the next, we'd take the rooftops.

Again, though -- the risk of putting myself outside... I don't know if I have the bravery or desperation needed for that, yet. Give me until this weekend and we'll see if I still care about revealing my location. Like I've been saying: there's a big ol' fence that protects me from the zombies on the street. My fear is only that there will be so many of them that they'll overpower that fence, or that someone left the front gate open. Still, I'm sure there are apartments in this complex -- vacant or not -- that have much more food and better supplies than my own. Even if I don't find other survivors, I can at least move to a new location.

I suppose I should warn anyone reading that I might, suddenly, just stop writing. This could be because I was eaten, obviously -- knock on wood, or it could mean I made a break for it. I'm pretty sure I'll put some thought into any sort of escape plan, so you'll probably get a warning, but you never know if something comes up during the day... Anyway I wrote all my sentimental stuff in the will on my fridge, so I won't get into that here. Basically I'm just glad someone is reading this and someone will know what happened to me.

Belen hasn't called me back yet, either, and I'm worried about her. She's one of the funnest people I've ever worked with. Short with dark hair, very down-to-earth and personable. When she first started working at the coffeeshop I could hardly talk to her on account of how shy I felt around her. But I warmed up and we got to be friends and then a meteor crashed outside Guerneville and zombies invaded the city. I'll keep trying to call her. She's the only person I can talk to who doesn't make me want to rip my hair out.

In the meantime... I suppose I'll wait.

I put a sign in the upstairs window that says SURVIVOR INSIDE in red marker and so hopefully that gets me some good attention. I was thinking about how people paint HELP on the rooftop... If anything maybe someone from inside the apartment complex will see it and send out a recon group. It would be nice to be around other people. I think that's why I've spent so much time writing in this blog. To share. To not feel like I'm the only one experiencing this disaster.

And I think my neighbors -- the ones right next door -- are zombies. They're a young couple I never really met, maybe late 20's, who dress in dark Gothic clothes and keep to themselves. I hadn't heard anything from them since last Wednesday, not even a bump or a footstep. And we have thin walls. I'm sure they'd have heard me walking up and down the stairs, at least. After a few days I figured they just weren't home and got caught up somewhere else. Or they were already dead. But last night -- around two o'clock in the morning -- I heard thumping and bumping against the wall. Just this steady thump, thump, thump sound like a person slapping their hand on the wall over and over. And maybe it was coming from the street outside, but I thought I heard moaning through the wall. It could have been paranoia. I haven't heard any more thumping or moaning from next door all morning. If I wasn't talking about a zombie invasion, you'd think I was complaining that my neighbors were sex-addicts. I'm hoping otherwise, but I'm pretty certain that they've become zombies. I don't know how it happened -- maybe one of them was bitten when they hurried home -- but I have a bad feeling in my gut from this. If there's any hole in my plan, it's zombies getting inside of the green fence. And if there are two zombies in the apartment next door to mine, I'm starting to feel a whole lot less safer.

Not to worry. I'm going to make blueberry pancakes for lunch.

Belen

I accidentally left the television on last night and yanked out the headphone cord when I was sleeping, so I woke up to the sounds of "The Price is Right" and had myself a mini-heart attack before finding the awareness to shut off the TV. For a few minutes I just sat there listening for zombies outside my door, but there were no sounds. No new sounds, I mean. There was still the moaning. The occasional roar of a plane. I hear helicopters flying overhead but I'm too scared to try and flag them down. There's no easy way to make myself visible without advertising myself to all the zombies in the street. I'm fine waiting as long as possible with the supplies I have. I'd rather know I survived as long as I could before risking my life. I'm not heroic. But anyway after a few minutes of waiting (and no I didn't put my head up against the door like an idiot or stand too close to the window), I convinced myself it was all clear and went about my morning.

It's almost noon -- still pretty early. I've already run out of things to keep me busy. I had a piece of bread for breakfast and a glass of tap water. I'm thinking about digging through my closet for the bong and lighting up -- even though two weeks ago I quit cold-turkey when I applied for that job at the River Rock Casino. I stopped smoking when I heard they did drug testing and, since that job pays so much better, I thought it would be worth it. But that's sort of a pointless idea if zombies are spreading across the country. Some reports on the news today have been talking about virus outbreaks in San Francisco, Sacramento, and even as far south as Santa Cruz and as far north as Portland. I'm guessing that the whole west coast will be gone before the weekend. Every day brings more and more bad news.

I talked to Belen today. She called me back. She's healthy and safe with her parents in Fountain Grove -- this neighborhood about ten minutes away -- and we talked for almost an hour before her parents needed her to help with some chore, block up some window. Who knows how long cellphones will work... It was good to hear that she's okay. I called her -- and everyone I knew -- over the past few days and only a couple have replied. People not from Santa Rosa, mostly. Other than Belen, I haven't heard from anyone from work. I keep my phone charged, just in case, making use of the elecricity that might not last for much longer.

What bothers me the most right now is that I might be safe enough to leave my apartment and at least walk around the complex. There's that ten-foot-tall fence that surrounds the whole place and, if someone was smart enough to lock the front gate, that should be protection from the outside streets. The zombies can see through the fence, however, and depending on how many there are -- they might be numbered enough to rush the fence and force their way over the top. So then I stay in my apartment because I don't want to be the one who agitates them into a full-force attack. Thus, it feels like I'm my own prisoner, you know? Other than the moaning and the occasional gunshot, there's not much going on that makes me think I'm in the middle of a zombie invasion. And because of that, I'm still remarkably calm.

A little marijuana might help, too. But I'm still putting that off. I've got to keep my mind active and ready... Though seven days of lethargy makes me feel usueless, anyway. I just meander around the apartment, upstairs and downstairs. I play videogames for five minutes at a time. I watch the news for hope of good news. I draw. I write in this blog. I send e-mails out to all my friends and family members. My mom keeps saying she's trying to find people to take her into Santa Rosa so she can rescue me. I got another e-mail from my dad today that suggested I find the nearest sporting goods store (to get a shotgun, he suggested) and I Google-mapped the nearest one to be about fifteen minutes down Mendocino. Everyone else I've been talking to has been telling me to stay inside, stay quiet, and wait for it to pass.

I don't think people realize how big of an issue this is. Maybe I just pay more attention because it's affecting me first. I'm trying to think about how I acted when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, how I was so distanced from it that I really didn't know what it was like to be there. I only knew what I saw on the news. Anyone not in Santa Rosa right now -- anyone still living somewhere beyond the reach of the virus -- you have no idea. You have NO idea. This won't just pass along. This is much worse than that. In case you're not watching the news, you should know that a meteor landed near Guerneville (thirty minutes away from Santa Rosa) ten days ago and immediately got anyone nearby sick with this mutative virus. They closed down Guerneville but the virus got out. It was in Santa Rosa seven days ago. And like I said, it's already showing up in big cities around here. By tomorrow, I bet most of California will be infected.

And even though everyone's telling me that it'll all be okay... I'm not so sure. I can put off hope for rescue until this weekend. Maybe. I'll be out of food by Sunday. In the meantime I think I'll keep trying to talk to Belen (she never called me back like she said she would) and see if her family has a car. If they do, then that's one flicker of hope I haven't considered. Because even I have a car -- a Jeep Cherokee with plenty of seating -- but it's parked outside of the fence on the street where the zombies are. Anyway it doesn't matter right now. I just like to know that Belen is alive and somebody I can talk to who understands what's happening. Listening to the news makes me feel like a test rat in some experiment.

I might light up. Two hits. Just to calm my nerves.

Survivor at 220 Winston Road

To Do List:

1. Barricade the doors and windows.
2. Talk to my parents.
3. Talk to my friends.
4. Write my will.

I did everything on my list, except for the second one. I haven't found the energy to take apart my furniture to board up the windows. It's been just glass and closed windowblinds for seven days now and so far none of the zombies have figured a way in. They don't stick around long enough to break the windows because I don't think any of them have figured anyone's in here. I closed up the windows tight and put duct tape around the edges, hopefully sealing it. On the downside I think I've cut off my oxygen. At least once a day I've lifted a bit of the tape from beneath the door and tried to suck in some pure air... but I don't want to risk getting their attention.

So I can't really do much else besides stuff a chair beneath the doorknob. I stay quiet. I use headphones. I don't need to wear shoes and I could -- though I don't -- walk around naked just to keep my noise at a total minimum. I haven't taken a full shower but two days ago I filled up pots with water from the bathroom sink and splashed soapy water on my face, armpits, back of the neck. It's been awfully hot these past days and it gets pretty toasty with the windows closed and sealed and the fan turned off. It can get uncomfortably sweaty, too, and it's starting to smell like a locker room in here. I keep myself clothed just in case I need to make an emergency escape. I don't want to get caught with my pants down.

So I don't know if anyone in Santa Rosa is still alive. I've talked to my parents and they haven't been hit by the virus yet -- they live in Truckee. I imagine it will spread to the bigger cities first. I talked to them yesterday and so I'd say they have another day before Truckee is evacuated. We didn't get much of a warning. I woke up seven days ago and the sky was smokey and the whole city was screaming with sirens and squealing tires and explosions and gunshots, like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. I just walked out to my street where my car was parked and I see this group of zombies chase down this girl who trips and falls face-first into a mailbox... then gets ripped up by these zombies. I got back into my apartmnet before they noticed me. I got the chair under the door and locked the deadbolt and shut the windows...

And that was seven days ago. I made that To-Do List because I knew that I'd eventually start something like this blog... some way to keep a record of what's happening. This is a little more insightful than the will I wrote. That's just this scrap of paper I tacked up on the fridge that says who can have all my stuff, and says how much I love my parents and all that... But I thought this would be more valuable. Not just for me. I love to write so this won't be anything but a calming alternative to a constant state of fingernail-gnawing anxiety. But this is for other people who might still be alive in Santa Rosa and still have internet access. Someone at the library. Anyone. I'm at 220 Winston Road. I'm alone and my supplies are low. I live in a gated apartment complex. If you read this then please contact me.

In the meantime, since my list is done, I've reached a kind of peacefulness with the situation. I feel relatively safe -- I notice that most of the zombies are outside of the fence, which means that if the front gate is shut, the whole apartment complex is protected by a ten-foot steel barrier. I haven't heard much screaming from anyplace nearby and I have hope that no one in my complex has become a zombie. If that's true, then maybe one of them will venture out and gather us all together. I'm too scared to even open the goddamn windowblinds so I don't think that person will be me. I'm fine here. Although I did eat one of my last two Top Ramen's today. It was worth it, of course, because I've been starving myself just to push my already low food supply as far as possible.

I'm down to the following:

1 Top Ramen (shrimp), 1 jar peanut butter, 6 slices of bread, 1 bottle kahlua, 1 bottle rum, 1 package of blueberry pancake mix, butter, salsa, oatmeal, and pasta noodles.

Electricity is still on, obviously. I'm glad for that. But who knows how long that will last? I've been trying to keep myself busy so that I don't freak myself out thinking too much. I feel better already just having something productive to do. And it feels good to get my voice out there. I really hope this turns out good. I gave the blog an optimistic title... I feel pretty confident. I've seen all the zombie movies and I feel like I've got that training on my side. As long as zombies act like they do in the movies -- and these ones all look like the slower kind -- then I'm fine. I'll be fine.

It's been seven days since I saw ten or eleven of them out there... Now there could be a hundred. At night it sometimes sounds like there's a hundred of them out there, moaning and moaning all night. It's a haunting sound. The smell of them rotting in the sun, too -- I'm glad I sealed up the windows but it still wasn't enough to keep out the smell of death.