huge—about a million times bigger than my studio apartment on Oak Hill—but there are still days when I feel like climbing the walls.
So I walk. Like an old man going for a constitutional around the block. Sometimes I find things. Mostly junk blown across the bridge from town. Sometimes I find newspapers stuck to the side of the warehouse. Seeing them like that always reminds me of the leaflets you see stuck under windshield wipers.
I peel them off and keep them. I never go out looking for more. That would be a bad idea, especially now. I’ve already drawn the attention of the ramblers, and even though I can’t see them, I can smell them. That sharp sweet smell of rancid meat. They’re out there, lurking around. I can feel them.
December 3
The “experts” had all kinds of theories, but no answers. Some of them said it was a government experiment gone awry. Others blamed a tear in the fabric of reality. Some wag even blamed Global Warming. And of course, the saucerheads blamed UFOs.
Then, for a period of about forty-eight hours, the various nations of the world turned their attentions on each other. The U.S. blamed terrorists; so did England; France and Germany blamed Russia; Russia blamed Japan; the countries in the Middle East blamed each other.
Martial law was declared in almost every major U.S. city. The Army and the Navy rolled out and got rolled over; same for the National Guard. Things started to break down. Then they started to slow down. The phones died. The TVs showed only test patterns, then static. People left the cities en masse, only to get stuck on the highways.
None of it mattered to the tentacles and the ramblers and the rest. To them a meal on the road was just as good as a meal at home.
I didn’t own a car, and although it would have been easy enough at that point to steal one, I felt the key to survival wasn’t in leaving town . . . at least not exactly.
I put myself into one of the situations they give you in college entrance exams—the kind I had done so well on before I got here and flunked out. I put myself in the position of the monsters. I tried to think the way they did. If I wanted to eat, where would I go? Where the food was, of course. Where the people are.
So I packed a bag and went where there were no people. I almost made it, too.
Almost.
December 4
I don’t know what the ramblers are. Zombies, I guess. They look human: they have human facial features, however disfigured and grotesque. I came upon five of them just as I reached the Town Bridge. I saw them and they saw me. Only a couple of them had eyes (most only have dark pits where their eyes should be), but that didn’t seem to bother them. I could feel them looking at me, scrutinizing me. They each had a nose, or the vestiges of a nose, and long, jagged fangs that punctured their cheeks and shredded their lips as they snapped their mouths open and closed. They were standing in front of a burned-out deli, filling their filthy maws with the spoils from the shattered display window.
I stood frozen for a moment when they started toward me. Not walking, not running. Rambling, as it were.
I ran. I looked back once, but kept running. On the other side of the bridge, the road bent to the north and I lost them behind some trees. I’d put about a mile between them and me, and I thought that would be enough. They don’t move very fast.
I was panting and sweating and laughing. It was not good laughter. It was the kind of laughter they put people away for. I forced myself to stop.
I started walking again until I reached the industrial section of Oakridge. Warehouses, factories, and other soot-caked buildings. Smoke stacks pointed into the sky like silent cannons. Broken glass twinkled in the weeds that grew up from the cracked cement. Concrete culverts channeled rust-coloured water. A set of old train-tracks on a railway embankment.
In a word: heaven.
December 5
I brought a bag of books with me from home, but I lost
So I walk. Like an old man going for a constitutional around the block. Sometimes I find things. Mostly junk blown across the bridge from town. Sometimes I find newspapers stuck to the side of the warehouse. Seeing them like that always reminds me of the leaflets you see stuck under windshield wipers.
I peel them off and keep them. I never go out looking for more. That would be a bad idea, especially now. I’ve already drawn the attention of the ramblers, and even though I can’t see them, I can smell them. That sharp sweet smell of rancid meat. They’re out there, lurking around. I can feel them.
December 3
The “experts” had all kinds of theories, but no answers. Some of them said it was a government experiment gone awry. Others blamed a tear in the fabric of reality. Some wag even blamed Global Warming. And of course, the saucerheads blamed UFOs.
Then, for a period of about forty-eight hours, the various nations of the world turned their attentions on each other. The U.S. blamed terrorists; so did England; France and Germany blamed Russia; Russia blamed Japan; the countries in the Middle East blamed each other.
Martial law was declared in almost every major U.S. city. The Army and the Navy rolled out and got rolled over; same for the National Guard. Things started to break down. Then they started to slow down. The phones died. The TVs showed only test patterns, then static. People left the cities en masse, only to get stuck on the highways.
None of it mattered to the tentacles and the ramblers and the rest. To them a meal on the road was just as good as a meal at home.
I didn’t own a car, and although it would have been easy enough at that point to steal one, I felt the key to survival wasn’t in leaving town . . . at least not exactly.
I put myself into one of the situations they give you in college entrance exams—the kind I had done so well on before I got here and flunked out. I put myself in the position of the monsters. I tried to think the way they did. If I wanted to eat, where would I go? Where the food was, of course. Where the people are.
So I packed a bag and went where there were no people. I almost made it, too.
Almost.
December 4
I don’t know what the ramblers are. Zombies, I guess. They look human: they have human facial features, however disfigured and grotesque. I came upon five of them just as I reached the Town Bridge. I saw them and they saw me. Only a couple of them had eyes (most only have dark pits where their eyes should be), but that didn’t seem to bother them. I could feel them looking at me, scrutinizing me. They each had a nose, or the vestiges of a nose, and long, jagged fangs that punctured their cheeks and shredded their lips as they snapped their mouths open and closed. They were standing in front of a burned-out deli, filling their filthy maws with the spoils from the shattered display window.
I stood frozen for a moment when they started toward me. Not walking, not running. Rambling, as it were.
I ran. I looked back once, but kept running. On the other side of the bridge, the road bent to the north and I lost them behind some trees. I’d put about a mile between them and me, and I thought that would be enough. They don’t move very fast.
I was panting and sweating and laughing. It was not good laughter. It was the kind of laughter they put people away for. I forced myself to stop.
I started walking again until I reached the industrial section of Oakridge. Warehouses, factories, and other soot-caked buildings. Smoke stacks pointed into the sky like silent cannons. Broken glass twinkled in the weeds that grew up from the cracked cement. Concrete culverts channeled rust-coloured water. A set of old train-tracks on a railway embankment.
In a word: heaven.
December 5
I brought a bag of books with me from home, but I lost
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