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.
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