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.
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.
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