Sunday, July 19, 2009

#0023 | 07/19 | 11:15 AM ~ Home

Well yesterday was another whole friggin' bag of laughs and tickles.

The survivors (elder dude; Henry, bald dude; Hector, goth dude; Sean, girl; Anna) didn't want to let me go off alone. What the fuck. Seriously. What the hell.

I separated our supplies into pieces for a reason. What did they think I was doing, planning a picnic? Fuck groups, and fuck them, I just want to get back home. They can stick together if they want. We're all gonna die eventually anyways. And if it isn't the Freaks that tear us apart at night, it'll be another group of Bandits or a bastard gone trigger-happy (Sean's expression when I handed him his weapon filled care-package yesterday comes to mind...).

But fuck if they'll listen. They promised they'd follow me anyways. And then there's Anna.

Now... I'm not going to bash her. She's been through a lot. Shit I can probably only imagine. She's messed up, and I know, she needs help. But she's trying to get it in all the wrong places. Namely me.

I guess she heard the arguing going on in the man office (she's in the principal's office) and comes out after almost a whole day in hiding. I thought her eyes would be teary. Her face all sorts of blushy and fuzzy. But she looked alright. Not someone who just went through hell and a half. Not someone who might now have several phobias and a few emotional disorders. Just alright.

Now... alright is a hell of a delicate term, for, although she looked well at that point in time, that doesn't necessarily mean she is fine and dandy. The exchange that followed cemented that to me.

I turned around; agitated. The conversation hadn't been going how I wanted it to go. We'd been arguing for close to an hour then in the damp, heated office, and the rest of the survivors refused to see reason. They seemed pretty determined to see the day off as my companions. Shit.

Behind me Henry and Hector greeted the girl warmly and gently, almost patronizingly. She practically ignores them and instead asks me, what was going on.

I, of course, being turned around can't know shes addressing me. I stand there for a couple of moments until the silence starts getting awkward and then I turn around. Anna's looking at me expectantly. Henry and Hector are looking at her sadly, and Sean looks like he really doesn't really give a shit.

Yup. Girl's fucked in the head.

Henry tries to explain what we're arguing about, and she goes on ignoring his every word until he hits the part were I'm trying to not go with the group. To leave alone. And she get's a panic attack.

Her legs get wobbly, her breath starts streaming in short bursts, and we have to get her a chair fast. The whole arguing thing goes to shit.

Henry, Hector, and Sean, they want to group up because they figure we'll have a better chance at survival as a group. Henry believes this solidly, he reasons that it's our only chance for survival. He doesn't want to let a teenager go out on his own out there. Never mind that I was the reason we're all alive here today. Hector's the same. Sean doesn't exactly follow that thought path, he'd rather go on his own with Hector. But since Hector advocates the group idea, so does he. They're partners... y'know... life partners.

Anna's another can of beans entirely. We don't know exactly what's wrong with her, Henry assumes she's in shock and has post traumatic stress disorder (he's a doctor and an armchair psychiatrist; yay), but you might as well attach that kind of diagnosis to any of us. We're all fucked up in one way or another.

When I found her yesterday in the infirmary, she was tied up to one of the infirmary's beds. Black-eye, swollen arms and legs, and 100% naked. But it wasn't a pretty sight. Her body was swollen and bruised all over. She heard the door open and she sort of tightened up. Her eyes shut defensively and her breathing sky-rocketed.

I untied her and explained that the Bandits were dead, that it was safe, that no one would hurt her anymore. And then I spent the rest of the night holding her as she cried.

Before dawn, I scrounged out clothes for her from the school's lost and found.

Henry pulled me aside and explained that although her reaction was out of the norm, reactions to traumatic events were varied. This was hers. It appears she'd become attached to me.

I think earlier I'd mocked the stereotypical guy-meets-foxy-chick-in-the-apocalypse-and-they-go-forth-and-frolic cliche, but shit. Reality wont let me get away from the cliche.

And things sorta settled from there. Group wouldn't leave me, girl wouldn't leave me, ergo, I couldn't leave the group. Shit. Whatever. And then another argument arose, whether to stay or leave.

Henry, Hector, and Sean all wanted to stay. They thought the school was a perfectly good place to ride out the apocalypse. not only was it fortified, but they had plenty of supplies to last for awhile here. Not to mention working water while we could get it.

Anna wanted to leave, but she wouldn't say it in so many words. But it was obvious she wanted to get away from the school. And I, of course, still had my burning (okay, out and cold) obligation to help good old Ruth back home.

Good times.

So we agreed to move out (after I promised the guys there would be working water). The walk back wasn't a problem, we had shopping carts to situate our plentiful harvest and loot, and the walk took only two hours to navigate across the blocked streets and blocks.

And then we got home. And the horror started up all over again. Home is where the heart is? Well the heart certainly ain't here.

I went in first (I'm doing a lot of firsts these days) and told the others to wait outside a bit, in the safety of the light (Anna would only wait if I held her by the shoulders and promised I'd be back).

I entered through the back door, which leads into a small hallway that connects to the kitchen and the guestroom (above the basement) where Randy was so nobly in distress. Well the bitch ain't in distress no more. And he never got a chance to be a Freak after all.

His body's cold. Stone cold. His head's been crushed in. And by the looks of it, by the same dented metal bat I used to bust into the basement from my room. It was lying near the bed, bloody near the hand grips. But... since the last time I saw that bat was in my room... then the bitch Ruth must have sought shelter in there... oh joy...

I was going to directly check my room but another thought struck me first. There was still the problem of the two Freaks who'd been nesting in my parents room as of yet. Before I fired any heavy arm, it might be better to...

And I was right. They were there, curled up against each other as they had been that first day. My parents bed was moist and yellow from their urine. But it turned out to be a good thing that they're bodies were so entwined. I stepped into the room, held the rifle against their heads, and fired off half my rounds.

Freaks have thick skin, as bullet resistant as skin can get I think. But by the end, their heads resembled so much dead mush.

And then there was a crash and a series of protests, all followed by a scream and footsteps. I walked into the living room to find Anna, panic stricken, standing in the kitchen, a rifle held steadily in her arms as she walked forward.

It seems at the sound of the gunfire, the fellows outside (including Anna) had thought me a goner. But Anna assured me, that she was the only one brave enough to grab a firearm and head in. I wondered then if I should praise her loyalty, but I didn't. That would feel too much like praising a damn dog...

I told her I'd killed two Freaks who'd been nesting and still had to check one last room. I told her to head back outside to the others and explain I wasn't dead yet. And she did (but not before making me promise I wouldn't die).

I waited a few minutes while she walked out before opening my bedroom door.

Ruth was lying on my bed. But she was dead.

She was lying on her back, in a horrid imitation of a delivering position. Her legs were pulled back and everything below the waist was blood and guts. It literally looked as if she'd delivered a bomb to term, a bomb that had exploded its way out of her.

My bed was ruined, even with sheets changed, no way in hell I'm sleeping there ever again.

And of course, another standard horror land cliche, the horrible trail of blood, leading away from her horrible delivery scene, around the room a bit, back to the bed, under the bed, and finally and undoubtedly, into the hole I'd carved under the bed. Into the basement. Whatever had busted out of her wasn't exactly making my day here...

I didn't want to get too close, so I ducked on my knees and scanned under the bed. Nothing there. Okay.

I moved the bed toward the southern wall. Back against its usual position, revealing the hole. Then there was the problem of getting the newly born whatever it was out.

I waited a few minutes hoping it would appear on its own but when it didn't, I got against the hole and banged against it with the barrel of the rifle. A few moments of this and an audible gasp and gurgle sounded into the quiet room.

I banged against the revealed wooden flooring one last time before almost jumping back and breaking my neck. A small white hand floated up from the darkness and grabbed silently at nothing in particular.

The skin on the hand was translucent, I could see each and every vein that ran underneath that horrid mess of muscle and membrane. And each finger was accompanied by a small jagged yellow nail.

Eventually a small, bald, uneven head rose to accompany that hand, and then a whole body rose into view from the unknowable darkness. The fetus Freak, as I coined it, had no legs to speak off, just a gelatinous end. In its other hand, it held the remains of a Freak rat held tightly in its grip.

I unloaded on that thing like no other. I didn't even give it a chance to place me mentally as food. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.

And then I walked outside. The others asked me what had happened, I responded that it didn't matter. The structure was insecure. Too many open places for Freaks to get in come night time, too much Freaky infected blood to clean up, and not nearly enough time. I agreed then, that it would be more prudent to head back to the school. For which Hector playfully jabbed me.

And so we did.

And the rest is history. Nothing much happened the rest of that day. It took a little longer for our group to get to the school than it had been to arrive. We had a bit of a dilly deciding on which building to settle into later, what with Anna wanting to stay away from the infirmary, but we settled into the central building.

The Bandits had gone to the trouble of fortifying it, why not put it to good use. The classrooms (minus one certain classroom the Bandits had been using as a body-dump) allowed each of us to have our own improvised room per say.

I got 212. It's on the second floor, and going by the decorations that surround the backboard (and the tickets taped carefully around the computer that sits in the teacher's desk) the former occupant was one hell of a Laker's fan. I'm not.

The rest of the day went without much ado, and the night passed by too.

This morning I found a piece of paper tucked into my pocket. I unfolded it and found a strange message written upon it: USEless.

Today's gonna be a whole lot of nothing. We're going to work and barricade a few things which seem weak. And Henry is insisting we begin saving up gallons of water for when the water finally stops flowing. Which will probably be soon. He has a point.

So we've pulled out some barrels from the cafeteria kitchen and he's getting to that. Though obviously it's smarter to save more so later Hector and Sean are going out to look for more containers.

We're pretty well stocked as far as food and weapons are concerned, but we'll need more eventually. I just worry tha

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