AJ: Scout

"I wish I was a smoker." I thought looking out the windshield. I had just finished my scouting run, and I was wishing for something, anything to take my mind off of it. Things had started relatively easily. I had armoured up, gotten in the car, and made my way through town. Things, like before were relatively peaceful. There were about three droolers in town. The lady from the other day, still searching for me. I drove by her, and I think she registered confusion, but its hard to tell. The next one was just standing staring in the window of a store. It was staring either at its reflection, or at a collection of African masks hanging in the window. It looked like it was either trying to remember who it was, or what the masks were. It didn't even register me as I drove by. The third was and older guy in life. He was shambling around just before the big iron bridge. he turned surprisingly quickly trying to grab at the car as it drove by.

I knew that the hospital was a horror story, so I didn't drive down that way. I did a quick loop around. The trees were already losing most of their leaves. The dead leaves rustling through the deserted streets. When we this had started this the whole world had been so green. it was so warm, late summer. Now it felt like the world was dying around us, It was just the change of the seasons, but a horrible alone feeling welled up inside me. It felt like I was the last person alive. It had been weeks since we had isolated ourselves, but for some reason the signs of destruction were minimal. Sure, there were plenty of signs of disaster. I passed a row of four houses all burned to the the ground. Plenty of smashed windows, and plenty of bad scenes. I occasionally drove past a dried pool of blood. But strangely there were no bodies, barely any droolers either. It was kind of creepy. If things were this quiet, there should be people?
The one thing that led me to hope was the suitcases and boxes. Plenty of yards had what looked like dropped suitcases, and boxes.. Like they were running in a hurry and dropped something with no time to turn back for it. The clothes were fluttering around some draped from trees. The reason this gave me hope was that there were no cars in the yards. So obviously they had bugged out in a hurry. God knows where everyone had gone though. Hopefully they made it wherever they were going.

Going down Pitt street, then taking my usual path. I drove by my house. The doors were still secured, and the windows looked fine. I stopped to check in. Things were as I left them. I grabbed all the pillows, and bed clothes, and loaded them into the car. It wasn't as much as we needed, but it would help. A few other essentials were packed into the car, some tools, some clothes, two pair of binocs, the usual goodness, and I was off again. Just to be safe, I made sure to pull the steps away from the house, on front and back. The basement windows were boarded up years ago, my grandfathers idea, and the first floor windows were all about 5 and a half feet of the ground. That would keep things nice and secure in there for the meantime. Loading up the car, I heard a moan from the bushes. A drooler was laying in my rose bushes. I didn't immediately recognize him, he was in pretty rough shape. He had several bite marks on his face, and arms, and his legs were pretty much gone. He was almost covered in dead leaves. I didn't really know his name, but his family lived across the street from mine. I could actually see a faint blood trail coming from his back door leading to his general direction. Obviously he had come home, been attacked, and tried to drag himself out to safety. My bushes must have seemed like the ideal place to hide. God only knows how long he had lain there bleeding out. He must have turned there, and hadn't been strong enough to go anywhere else.
I sort of knew this guy, I couldn't leave him like this. It felt wrong some how. A quick trip down the basement provided a remedy. I was standing over this barely functioning monster. He was a mess. Hard to imagine something like this had caused so much worldwide destruction over the last year. I barely felt the axe go through his skull, but the sound... I don't think I will ever forget the sound. He stopped moaning as soon as the axe hit home. I know that whatever had brought him back, had simply stopped when his brain did. He looked like just one more corpse. I didn't have the capability to bury him. The sudden image of me as humanities grave digger sprang to mind. It sent a shiver down my spine...


The car needed some gas, so I went and gassed her up. The power was still holding, and the pumps were still working. I filled the tank, and made sure to put the nozzle back. Images of Vincent Price roaming deserted Los Angeles sprang to mind as I looked down the deserted street. I could see the building, home, I guess. from the gas station. I'm sure if they were looking out the upper windows they could see me. All I could see were the mirrored empty windows. I finished gassing the car up, so I ducked in and grabbed a couple of cold Pepsi's and a bag of doritos. I didn't go too far into the gas station, there had to have been a clerk once, and quite frankly he could stay wherever the hell he was.


I had been fiddling around town for a few hours. It was around noon at this point. So I finally decided to take a look at reserve St. I had purposely avoided that street. It was the main street out of town, and I was a little afraid it might be blocked with cars, like in the movies. Whenever these things happened in the movies the big main roads always got clogged with cars. that was another thing I had to talk to the rest back home about. We had some knowledge about what was going on, it was all taken from movies and books. We had to figure out how much of it applied to our situation. I had proven the whole brain thing to myself twice now, but what about the rest of it?rounding the corner I passed the funeral parlour. I didn't notice any particular traffic. Of course then, I crested the hill. I could see Sobeys, and Supervalu. and the parking lots of both places were full. Completly full of thousands of droolers. the big glass windows of both grocery stores were smashed out, the things were milling around outside, and inside. There were charred areas and the inside of supervalu looked like it was bombed out. On top of the roof I could make out a few what looked like droolers. Until one of them started waving at me. It looked like he was doing some sort of jumping jacks. One of the droolers must have seen him jumping and they all started moaning, it sounded horrible. A few thousand raspy moans is enough to turn anyone away from a good meal. I was sort of transfixed it was almost hipnotic. They were reaching for the roof, some swaying, some just standing. moaning. I guess this is where everyone went. Whoever the people on the roof were, they must have had the same idea as I did; only they failed to see the innate vulnerability to hiding in a building with glass walls.

Thats how I got to the position for wishing I smoked. Staring at a wall of undead droolers. I was just about to slip the car into reverse when they spotted me. some of the ones on the permiter started to turn towards the car, this in turn made the ones around them to turn to see what was so interesting. It was like watching a slow motion nightmare as hundreds of dead faces turned towards me and started to snarl... I almost threw up.

I had one advantage to those poor bastards up on the roof. Mobility, and maybe a little more knowledge on how they worked. The one from the other day, the woman, it had kept following me, the ones that came into town, they were following traffic. I think that when they start following something they keep going in that direction until somehting catches their atttention. Makes them kind of like a juggernaut. Not too smart, but also not too easy to stop. I knew that if i turned aroun those things would stream down reserve street, making town that much worse. Luckily for me I had a plan. Those things were on either side of the street. and were pretty slim in the middle of the street. There were a few stragglers, but not a writhing mass like they were around the two stores. I decided to run for it. I slipped the car into drive lift my foot off the break, and slammed down the gas. I aimed directly downt he middle of the street. The things coming so close as to grabbing at the car. I'm sure that more than one of them lost an arm or a hand trying to grab for the car. I was about half way through, and doing a good clip when I hear a loud bang. One of those things must have been too close. I hit it full on going around 80 kliks. the thing hit my passenger side fender, and did a flip in the air like a ragdoll. It landed with a sickening splat behind the car. I didn't stop to find out if it was dead or not. I kept barrelling down the road. After I got to the top of the hill, I saw that the road ahead was clear. This gave me an idea. I could use their natural instincts against them. Backing the car up i brought it back to the top of the hill, and started to blare the horn. The remaining onces who had been too deep into the crowd to see my car were immediatly alerted to my presence. I stayed there for about an hour. Constantly blasting the horn. and for the first time I felt ok with playing some music. My CD player blasted out hit after hit, at quite a high volume as the rotting mass made its way to the car. When they got close enough that they could almost grab the bumper I sped away again. Making it to the next hill about a mile away. I kept doing this for awile. Leading those things away from town, and more especially away from the people on the roof.