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.
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.
1 comment:
OMG did you die!!!
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