Read Online The Zom Diary by Eddie Austin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eddie Austin
Tags: Zombies
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toxins from my body. I sweat and let my mind become blank; embracing the silence of the barn and, for the first time in days, rest comes easy.
It is dark when I am done and I let the water cascade onto the ground outside, it makes an odd sound, like someone taking a huge piss. I light the lamp, drip dry, and remember to double check the door, even though I have already done so before coming to the bath. I try to finish the paperback that I grabbed from the house days before, but I fall asleep.
⃰ ⃰ ⃰
The next morning I have one of those unpleasant, heart-jolting awakenings that one should get used to in a fucked up zombie apocalypse world, but never seem to. Someone is knocking on my door. Knocking? I throw on a blue jump suit that is handy and pull boots on my feet. When I drop the ladder, the knocking stops. My heart sinks and from outside, I hear a voice.
“Hey Kyle, it’s Bryce. Don’t shoot, OK?”
What the crap? I peek out a crack in the big barn door and there he stands all dressed in recon gear; blond hair under a black watch cap and holding an AK, not threateningly, but looking side to side as if cautious. A curious sack lays at his feet, is it moving?
“All right,” I call out, “Give me a minute, ok?”
I suppose that the time of subterfuge is over. I really don’t want to kill him, and I figure if he isn’t here with a posse, maybe he isn’t after my head. I grab my AK and walk through to the entrance room.
I swing the door open, and he looks up. He isn’t smiling. “Come in,” I say, “and shut the door behind you.”
He does this and I offer him a seat on the couch. I pull over a kitchen chair and sit with my AK on my lap. He props his next to the couch and shrugs: “I figure if you wanted to shoot me you would have done that at the door. I’m here to talk.”
“Fine. So, what’s going on. You going to bring me in for greasing your buddy way back when?”
He whitens some and takes another look at my AK, so I set the safety and put it on the table to my right.
He shakes his head. “God, that was you? I figured you weren’t new to the area. You were too clean to have traveled far. Why…? Look, that’s not why I’m out here, but why did you do it?”
So I tell him. “Those first few days I almost died a dozen times over. It seemed like everyone in town who had turned was passing through the farm after me, or going to the desert and God knows what. You remember what it was like.”
He nods and I’m sure the look on my faced nearly matches his. I continue. “So, once the zombies stopped coming through regular, it was the crazies with guns wanting to kill, steal, or rape anything in sight. I nearly got shot trying to talk to the first few who showed up. After a while I started shooting first. I figured you guys were more of the same. I’m sorry. Call it justifiable paranoia or whatever. It wasn’t personal; just self-defense.”
I stop then and wait for him to speak. After a time, he takes off his hat and rakes his fingers through his hair.
“The man you killed. He was a good man. He saved my life more than once on the road. He has a son. He lives with one of the other families of homesteaders out past Salem. He’s almost eleven now, I think.”
I really don’t want to hear any of this. I detached myself from caring about my fellow man long ago, but still I feel a pang of sadness for the boy. I don’t know if it is the way he just sits there looking at me or if it is memory of my own dad and where he must be. I brush my hands over my eyes and let out a deep breath.
“This sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
I stand then and reach over to the table to grab my glass pipe. I am hunting around for a
It is dark when I am done and I let the water cascade onto the ground outside, it makes an odd sound, like someone taking a huge piss. I light the lamp, drip dry, and remember to double check the door, even though I have already done so before coming to the bath. I try to finish the paperback that I grabbed from the house days before, but I fall asleep.
⃰ ⃰ ⃰
The next morning I have one of those unpleasant, heart-jolting awakenings that one should get used to in a fucked up zombie apocalypse world, but never seem to. Someone is knocking on my door. Knocking? I throw on a blue jump suit that is handy and pull boots on my feet. When I drop the ladder, the knocking stops. My heart sinks and from outside, I hear a voice.
“Hey Kyle, it’s Bryce. Don’t shoot, OK?”
What the crap? I peek out a crack in the big barn door and there he stands all dressed in recon gear; blond hair under a black watch cap and holding an AK, not threateningly, but looking side to side as if cautious. A curious sack lays at his feet, is it moving?
“All right,” I call out, “Give me a minute, ok?”
I suppose that the time of subterfuge is over. I really don’t want to kill him, and I figure if he isn’t here with a posse, maybe he isn’t after my head. I grab my AK and walk through to the entrance room.
I swing the door open, and he looks up. He isn’t smiling. “Come in,” I say, “and shut the door behind you.”
He does this and I offer him a seat on the couch. I pull over a kitchen chair and sit with my AK on my lap. He props his next to the couch and shrugs: “I figure if you wanted to shoot me you would have done that at the door. I’m here to talk.”
“Fine. So, what’s going on. You going to bring me in for greasing your buddy way back when?”
He whitens some and takes another look at my AK, so I set the safety and put it on the table to my right.
He shakes his head. “God, that was you? I figured you weren’t new to the area. You were too clean to have traveled far. Why…? Look, that’s not why I’m out here, but why did you do it?”
So I tell him. “Those first few days I almost died a dozen times over. It seemed like everyone in town who had turned was passing through the farm after me, or going to the desert and God knows what. You remember what it was like.”
He nods and I’m sure the look on my faced nearly matches his. I continue. “So, once the zombies stopped coming through regular, it was the crazies with guns wanting to kill, steal, or rape anything in sight. I nearly got shot trying to talk to the first few who showed up. After a while I started shooting first. I figured you guys were more of the same. I’m sorry. Call it justifiable paranoia or whatever. It wasn’t personal; just self-defense.”
I stop then and wait for him to speak. After a time, he takes off his hat and rakes his fingers through his hair.
“The man you killed. He was a good man. He saved my life more than once on the road. He has a son. He lives with one of the other families of homesteaders out past Salem. He’s almost eleven now, I think.”
I really don’t want to hear any of this. I detached myself from caring about my fellow man long ago, but still I feel a pang of sadness for the boy. I don’t know if it is the way he just sits there looking at me or if it is memory of my own dad and where he must be. I brush my hands over my eyes and let out a deep breath.
“This sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
I stand then and reach over to the table to grab my glass pipe. I am hunting around for a
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