Posts Tagged ‘zombies’

When the Shit Hit the Fan

Posted: March 16, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

It’s been over a month since I last posted. So much has happened, so much has changed. I don’t know where to start or how to even explain everything. It started with Javier’s birthday….

I sat watching McGrady from the window for some time that day. He was going through another group of survivors that had turned up. I watched from my office window as he picked through the gore-covered car. Whoever they were they certainly must have been through hell to get here. He okays the younger men and women to come through, but stops at the older women in the group. They couldn’t be older than my mom, but he’s quick to separate them from the group and remove them from the compound. The younger group walks in clearly still in shock and almost unaware that a chunk of their group has been taken. Each are given a yard assignment and tents. They’re to stay in McGrady’s daughter’s yard.

I don’t see the older group after that. Sometime later, Nick, the oldest McGrady boy turns back up. I make a note of it, deciding to bring it up to Javier later that night. The entire morning just felt very strange.

I finished what I needed to do for Javier’s birthday party. Vincent and Shelby were bubbling over with excitement! We all were so eager to have a day that was filled with celebration other than gloom and doom. We decorated the living room with the construction paper chains we made.

I then finish making everyone a microwaved cake in a cup. Javier comes in around 3 and we all yelled surprise! He lit up when he realized that everything was for him. Vincent and Shelby give him his tool belt. Javier gushes over it, nearly being moved to tears over how we remembered and went through so much to give him his day. Bonnie brings out my cakes in a cup and we all try for our best “Happy Birthday” en espanol. Javier is completely overwhelmed and he laughs with honest joy at our horrible rendition.

We enthusiastically eat our cake in a cup, enjoying it more than we would have had this been a normal life. We used some of our generator time to plug in my CD player. We dance around to a mix of the Beatles and the Foo Fighters.

Javier eventually pulls me to him as we jokingly mimic the tango to Everlong and then Here Comes the Sun. Bonnie, Vincent and Shelby all stopped and laughed with us. There was a moment where the song ended and a weighted silence fell. For a moment I thought that Javier and I would kiss, but Shelby squealed instead – “look! We’re finally going to be a real family now, with a mom and a dad!”

Javier and I are quick to pull away from one another. Bonnie opens her mouth to interject, but she doesn’t have any time to. Just as she began to speak, we heard McGrady’s voice coming loudly and assertively through his bull horn.

“All meen need to assemble women and children are to seek shelter, lock your doors,” his voice boomed.

Hope and Loss

Posted: February 12, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

I am thankful that we had gotten here when we did. Winter has finally found us and I am glad that my fireplace is workable. We’re warm, fed and have books to read and games to play. As strange as this world has become, at least here, we have some sort of semblance of normalcy. I just want to hold onto this little piece of my old life for as long as I can. I know life here is fleeting just like everything else, but I still can’t help but hope, just like my mom hopes that Ryan will come to us.  In the meantime, she has taken Armand and has found happiness in having someone to take care of.

I’ve transitioned nicely into the more maternal role that I have to be now. It was something I hadn’t envisioned for myself for several more years, but need outweighed the plan.

During the day Shelby and Vincent go off with the other kids. There’s talk of starting a school for them. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that. Sadly, they all have the amount of education that they would need in a world they this – they can read and write. My mom is quick to remind me, “what about when this is over,” she asks consistently.

And that’s where I get stuck. My mom holds onto such copius amounts of hope including the idea that things are not as bad out there. But I have to disagree.

The military bombed an entire development and a school to try and control the hordes and that was just some small suburb in New Jersey, I can only imagine what the cities are like. I wish I had my mother’s optimism, but I just don’t see how its possible that life will be restored anytime soon. At least, not life the way that we knew it.

I don’t argue with her though. I know her hope is one of the things that keeps her going. I don’t want to take that away from her as infuriating as I find it most days.

It’s Javier’s birthday tomorrow. I don’t think he realizes that I know. Bonnie and the kids have been working on a tool belt for him. I’ve been trying to get the ingredients together for some sort of microwaved cake. Javier is softening to life here, softening to me and to the kids. It’s amazing to see.

The New (Old) Digs

Posted: February 11, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Outta Town

Posted: February 7, 2012 in Home Sweet Home, On the Road Again
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Javier kept driving. We only stopped when we saw cars that hadn’t been in the epicenter of the bombing. Most of them have already been picked clean. We look for one that hasn’t had its gasoline siphoned out. Our bus runs on diesel and we know that we can only sustain it for so long. Most of them are a no-go, but we eventually find a van that was a little bit off the street. It has half a tank of gas when we turn it on. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Bonnie and I lead the way out of the neighborhood with the van. I’m excited to be going home to see if my mom is there. If Ryan is there…I’m also scared that they both will be there, maimed or worse yet…Undead. We fall quiet. She’s anxious too. She walked most of the way that we’re driving to get to Alcott Elementary from her school. I can tell from her withdrawn demeanor that her adventure to us must have been just as horrifying as our time at Alcott was, burying students and cleaning up left over zombie-goo.

Once we’re out of town I think we all begin to calm down a little bit. There were fewer people out here so hopefully that means fewer zombies and no mega-hordes.I’m expecting my street to be dead. I’m expecting some damage and carnage, but what I am not expecting is a complete barricade at the beginning of my street.

I stop. Javier stops. We all get out except for the kids. Mr. McGrady, my seventy-something year old neighbor greeted us, brandishing an assault rifle.

“HAVE ANY OF YOU BEEN BIT,” he bellows. I can see his five grandsons pop up on the other side of the barricade complete with matching assault rifles.

We all instinctively put our hands up and stand still. “None of us have been bitten, Mr. McGrady.” I never could bring myself to call him by his first name.

“Who’s with you,” he barks.

“Two coworkers and the kids I  have left from my class.”

He nods and begins to walk over to us. He looks over each of us before he boards the bus. He takes stock of each kid and our supplies. After about fifteen minutes, he gets off the bus and comes to me.

“I believe you. We’ll let you in, but it will cost you the supplies.”

Javier and I look at each other and then back at McGrady.

“We’ve fortified the perimeter. We’ve made this work. We have food and running water. Your mom is here,” he adds.

At the mention of running water, Javier was ready to even throw in the bus as payment for our admission and I was already walking in once I heard that my mom was waiting for me.

Escape from Alcott Elementary

Posted: February 7, 2012 in Alcott School, On the Road Again
Tags: , , ,
0

We’re alive. A bit worse for the wear, but somehow we are alive.

We left the morning after my last post. Bonnie and I did one final sweep of the school. I spent a good 20 minutes in my classroom. It was hard for me to leave it, after so many years of working to get to where I was, to be a teacher – a good teacher. That life is done now and I needed to be reminded of that. I took my pictures. The ones I kept framed on my desk were of my mom, my brother, my cat and even one of John and I. I took each of them out of their frames and slipped them into my purse.

That was when all hell broke loose.

It’s a New Dawn

Posted: January 29, 2012 in Alcott School, On the Road Again
Tags: , , , , ,
1

I slept in my classroom for the past couple of days. I just wanted to be alone. This all is just crushing and everything that happens just makes me think it can’t get worse, but it does.

It is oddly warm now for this time of year. The snow is gone and everything is just wet and muddy. We have a lot of water now so we all got to have our first real bath in weeks. We also did haircuts. It took me four years to grow out my hair from that bob that never looks right on me and it took twenty minutes to cut it all off. I look like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. I feel better though. I was even able to find new clothes and wash out my underwear. That’s all I’ve wanted to do was have clean underwear. You never know what you’ll miss until it’s gone and clean underwear was definitely one of those things.

We’re organizing the supplies that we do have and getting ready to load up the bus. Havier and I decided that we’re going to make a move to my house. We’re going to check and see if my mom is still there or if something happened to her. I told him about John’s farm and we agreed that that is probably the best place to be. It’s 30 minutes outside of the city so if we needed supplies we could always make a trip and since it is so isolated the chances of hordes are slimmer.

We’re setting out the first thing tomorrow morning. I have mixed feelings.

Burial in the Night

Posted: January 27, 2012 in Alcott School
Tags: , , , ,
0

I wake up just as the sun is setting the following day. Havier is with me, but the kids aren’t. I shoot up scared that my own selfishness caused another fatality.

“They’re on the roof in the snow with Matilda and Bonnie.”

“Bonnie,” I barely get it out, my mouth is so dry.

“Yes. The teacher who read your log?”

I clear my throat. “You mean blog.”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine.”

Several weighted moments float by. “Did you at least bury him?”

He looks at me again,wanting very badly to be the sardonic asshole that he is, but he stops mhimself ans says, “no. The ground is frozen. We put him in with Steinberg.”

I can feel my mouth literally drop to the floor. I’m stunned and disgusted that he’s in there with her. And that Havier had even thought that that was a viable option after he killed him right in front of me.

I push past him. I grab one of the shovels from the front and I storm out of the building. I can see the Undead in the distance, getting more restless as the night approaches, but at that moment in time, I just don’t give a damn. I’m already hacking into the kickball field when Havier comes out and stands on the far end, where the dirt ends and the grass begins.

“Have you gone completely loca,” he shouts. “The thombies are right there!” His inner Spainard is blazing at this point.

“Perhaps, but there is no way that he’s going to stay in the hole!”

“Leez, Leez – he’s gone! What is left -”

“Don’t even give me that bullshit.” I’m crying again. Yelling and crying, ugh. “This is the last thing that I can do for him so just shut the fuck up!”

He stares at me speechless for a moment. I can see the kids peeking out over the edge of the roof – Bonnie and Matilda included. Eventually Bonnie comes down with another shovel and begins to help me without so much as a word passing between us.

It goes faster with the help. She even helps me lift his body and move it outside. I covered the bloody stump where his head used to be with a rag. His head is in a garbage bag. Havier drove a screw driver through it just to make sure that nothing reanimated. I struggle to get his body down into the grave. Bonnie tries to help, but I am quick to wave her off.

Much like when I buried my students, I’m sobbing and struggling to find footing as I maneuver his body into the grave. I can feel the last real, tangible bit of my old life dying. There’s my mom and Ryan, but I haven’t seen them and though I might find my mom, my hope for Ryan never truly did exist. My hope is dying. I’m done.

I finally get his body in and it’s only after that I have him situated that I decide that I want his wallet. I want something of his to carry with me. After fumbling with him some more, I get it out. I leave him with his credit cards thinking that when this is finally all over and they start cleaning up, at least they’ll be able to identify him as John Reardon. I take off my once pink cardigan and I lay it over him. I’m not entirely sure why I do this, but at that moment I felt such comfort in doing it that I didn’t stop myself. I place his head beside him and together Bonnie and I begin to shovel the dirt back in.

One of the Undead had gotten past the fence again. I smack her straight in the face as Bonnie and I begin to walk back inside. She falls but doesn’t (re)die. I break away from Bonnie and now Havier. Matilda and the kids are all but leaning off the roof to see the commotion. Without a thought, I’m straddling the zombie I knocked down. I bare down and lodge the tip of my shovel into her mouth. I can hear and feel her bones and ligaments breaking and snapping as I push forward, severing her head in two. I stand up and spit on her.

Havier is watching me with that shocked expression again. More zombies are coming and at that moment, I’m just so pissed off that I want to take them all on, but Havier grabs me from behind and hoists me up. I drop the shovel. Matilda is getting the kids inside and Bonnie picks up my shovel and tries to help Havier get me inside. I’m strugging against him, waving both of my middle fingers furiously in the air and yelling…

“Fuck you, you fucking rotting parasitic flesh eating DOUCHE BAGS,” I whale at them. I reach down and rip off my flats and I throw them at the Undead. I hit one smack in the face while the other just falls to the cement. Regardless, it just me feel better even if no walker was hurt.

I don’t care who hears me. I don’t care that the kids can see all of this.

I’m just done.

You may take your apocalypse and shove it, Trebeck.

Freaky Friday

Posted: January 14, 2012 in Alcott School
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

…Which really is an understatement. Yesterday the kids should have been coming in with freaky outfits  and hair, but instead they spent it wearing a trash bag and rubber gloves as they shoveled bits and pieces of people, dumping them into bags and lugging them outside where another group was digging an enormous in the middle of the kickball field.

There are a few straggling Undead that paw at the fence. Havier found five in the teacher’s room when we opened it. Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Swan among them. Havier baited them to follow him outside where we both decapitated each one. I can’t lie and say that there wasn’t a small part of me that enjoyed taking out Zom-Swan. She was always dumping her work on the teachers and I think on more than one occasion came to our faculty meeting buzzed.

I was terrified to have all of us that spread out , but we had to do it. I had even armed the kids with tools and weapons so that if something happened, they would at least have a chance.

I am so obviously nervous and disgusted that Havier literally shoves the bottle of hooch in my face. He wants this done and over and for us all to be back in a safe space, not out there digging mass graves in the middle of a kickball field to buried what was left of their friends and teachers. I take two long drags. I’m fuzzy and warm-headed within moments. Breakfast had been pretzels and the last cans of apple sauce – I was hardly ready to be drinking big shots of Maker’s Mark, but it’s helping me push forward.

I keep thinking how we should have covered our mouths before we started this, but Havier was quick to point out that we both had been walking around the school without anything and neither one of us were zombified. We did tell the kids that they needed to be extra careful not to touch their faces until after we were done and cleaned up.

We spent much of the afternoon gathering, burying and bleaching the shit out of the school. We decide not to start sealing off the school until after the fumes subside. Havier starts at the back and works his way up. It’s night fall by the time he makes it around to the front. Thank God, we had Hurricane Irene over the summer because Havier had plywood for every window and for the entire front.

We work systematically from back to front. We’re hurried and worried and it’s crazy just how many of the Undead of beginning to crowd the fences with all the noise we’re making. This can not go fast enough, I just want to be back in the disgusting media center with all of my kids.

Somehow we do it though just as it’s getting too dark to see and the number is rising to near-horde proportion. I am pretty drunk at this point and I think some of the kids know that too. I begin to write myself off as the world’s most horrible post-apocalyptic teacher and it is at that moment that the fence finally gives, allowing a rush of groaning, smelly, Undead to come right for us. None of us are even thinking when we drop everything that we are doing and we run into the school. It’s chaos and no one is paying attention to anything other than getting themselves to the media center. The hallways are dark now that mostly everything is boarded up and it’s like I’m reliving the field trip to the Liberty Science Center and the touch-tunnel all over again.

We’re somewhere between the front of the building and the media center when the screams start, but it’s too dark to tell where it’s coming from or who it is or what’s the way to get out of danger. I just keep running and stumbling and oh my God, I’m just drunk and none of this at all seems real.

Then we’re bak in the media enter. Havier is yelling in broken Spanish. The only word I recognize is “Thombies! Thombies!” His accent is on and nothing is okay. I’m throwing up hooch and bits of apple sauce and it’s horrible. I have lost all control of everything, including myself.

I hear Armand breaking down and Matilda trying to restrain him. I see Vincent and can hear Shelby whaling. The room is spinning. Some of the kids are covered in sprays of blood, the Undead clearly have gotten some of us. It’s awful and in that moment I just collapse on the floor, staring up at the ceiling feeling the world around me spin until it’s almost unbearable.

If this had been a moment on The Walking Dead, I’d be yelling at the TV about how stupid she was for getting too drunk…for drinking at all! But, it’s not a she that did this, it was me and I’ve fucked up horribly and now kids are lost, dead and the rest are scared and I’m just too drunk to be able to bother.

I close my eyes and I float off into my inevitable blackout.

Newer Entries