Maria: Introduction

Hi, my name is Maria.

Allan asked me to write this up for his journal thingy, so I agreed. I read through some of the other stuff that he wrote. It's pretty scary how things happened so fast. It was the same for me and my family. We live just outside of town, in Reserve mines. My house was about five minutes from the airport. We didn't hear it over the scanner like Allan did. To us it was something that happened in our back yards. The big shootout with the police, those things streaming down the higway. Basically the way it went down was this. those things, droolers, i guess thats what they are calling them. some people want to use the Z word, but that makes it too scary, too much like something out of some nightmare that we have no chance of fighting. Thats why i prefer drooler. Anyway, those droolers got out of the airport, and were making their way down the road.


I was in the kitchen drying the dishes when I heard the first shot. It wasn't totally unusal to hear an odd gunshot. I live next to the woods, so people jacking deer, or goofing off happen all the time. I shrugged, and turned the radio a little louder. then I heard more shots, it sounded almost likea popcorn maker. shot after shot, after shot. It was pretty late, around ten pm if i remember right. My husband john was in bed, and my two sons were in the basement playing that xbox or watching movies or something. anyway, i must have stood there for like half an hour listening to that horrible popcorn noise. I knew it was gunshots, but I wasn't sure where it was coming from. I did have this horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache. I just knew it was some sort of invasion, or terrorists, or something like that. What was really happening, well that was beyond what i could ever imagine. About half way through i woke john up. He was kinda mad at first, but when he heard the noise he jumped up and threw on his pants and stuff. He wanted to go see, but I wouldn't let him. We sat in the living room facing the highway and looked for any sign of trouble. the whole time the noise happened, the occasional car would drive by. then, all of a sudden it was like a torrent broke loose. About 12 cars, some of them police cars, some not came driving by like bats out of hell. Two of them cars, white police cars, came screaming through. ONe of them sort of veered too far, and it slammed into the other one. The two cars hit almost in front of my house. the one in the passing lane flipped over the engine hood and slammed into an electic pole. When it hit the lights flickered and went off. The other car, its engine was destroyed, and the man who was driving was laying on the street, he wasnt moving.

John, being the good man that he was told me to call 911 and he went out there. He checked the guy lying on the road first. He must have died in the crash, because John just shook his head moved to the other car. It was wrapped around the pole, and looked bad. But john must have saw something in there moving, because he started to yell stuff. I couldnt make out everything, but it sounded like help is coming, or something like that.

When I tried calling 911, all i got was a weird fast sounding busy signal. John came into the house, he had some blood on his hand. Apparently whoever was in the back seat of the car in the prisoner holding place had bitten him on the hand when John was trying to help him. I poured some peroxide on the bite, and wrapped it in a towel. We didn't know what to do really, we called the boys up, my boys upstairs, my son John Jr, and brucey. they were a little freaked out when they saw their fathers bloody hand. I calmed them down. John jr, or JJ as we always called him was trying the phone again, and brucey was staring out the window at the car wreck when we saw them. The house was on sort of a hill, and we could see about a mile up the highway. The first ones that rounded the hill were in pretty rough shape. Brucey sort of let a scream go when he saw them. They looked horrible in the flickering lamp posts. There was one at the very frton that looked like a stewardess or something. It would walk so far, fall on its face, then get back up and start walking again. We were kind of creeped out. Then we saw the otherones. It was like a wall of those things. They were all the way across all four lanes of the highway, and were swarmed like ants. They werent moving fast at all, but they didnt show any signs of slowing down. Whe they reached a house a little close on the other side of the street they streamed into the front yard. They banged on the walls they banged on the windows, the doors, they banged and banged until they got in.


The house belonged to a good friend of ours, the mcissacs. they were a good family. Those drooler things filled the yard, and were streaming into the house. I didnt know what they wanted, or why they broke into the house until i saw Mikey in the upstairs window, he was trying to get out of the window onto the porch, but someone was in there grabbing at his leg. The thing, or person, or whatever grabbed his leg, and started to bit, other things saw this through another window and broke through. Mikey was about 18 the same age as JJ. they were good friends in school. I thank god that JJ was in the kitchen trying the phone. Mikey fell off of the porch roof. He was ok till he hit the crowd. I don't think he even hit the ground. THose things were tearing pieces off of him in chunks, they were eating him. Im sure that I threw up, im not exactly sure, i think i was a little in shock. those thinsg just ate the mcissac family, and they were coming for us. John, ever the man of action quietly mumbled we had to get out of here.

I didnt have time to get anything. I grabbed some knives, and our lone gun. JJ had a sword he had gotten at graduation. Brucey had some kitchen knives. We all loaded into the car. by this time those things were just starting to come close to our house. They had all flocked to the Mcissacs and that had slowed them considerably. The only way we could go was to glace bay. the things had the other way blocked. We screamed into the road, careful to avoid the wrecked cars. It didn't take long to get to town, a few minues, a year... I dont know what I was doing, or where I was. Our first stop was the police station, there wasn't any cars there. We got in, but we didn't see anyone. When we left the store we saw something. In the parking lot across the street, supervalu, there were like 3 police cars. One of them still had the lights going. We drove over, it took us awhile to realize the police were in the supervalu. It was like around midnight, and the place was closed. The cruiser with the lights flashing had what looked like blood all over the hood. John wouldn't let us out of the car, but he got out and looked around. He hollered in after the cops. One of them came out with a shotgun aimed at my husband. He looked pretty shaken up, but was ok to talk to. He basically told us that those things had wiped out the police, the army, and everything. They were going to use the stores as a base and set up there. We were welcome to come in.


We were there for awhile, a few hours. We were piling stuff up against the windows, makingthe place more secure. John looked really bad, he was starting to get grey in complexion, and sweating a lot. We took some drugs from the drug counter, some anti fever stuf, but John wouldn't stop working. Around Dawn we thought we had everything secured. We started to get bedding and stuff ready. The store had a lot of air mattersses, bedding, sheets, curtains. Itwasn't hard to make a warm nest for ourselves. We laid down, but couldnt really sleep. The boys slept, if lightly. the cops stood by the windows watching all day. The things started to flood in around noon of the next day. Some walked right past the store and kept walking, some walked into the store parking lot, for the most part they were just milling around. It was the scariest thing I have ever seen. The cops didnt really know what to do either. We sat and watched those things milling around for what seemed like hours. We went about the process of securing the place, adn making a home. There were about 30 of us. john started to get really sick on the second day. We broke into the pharmacy. I knew of a few pain killers and antibiotics. The bite on his hand was badly infected.


They started banging on the glass on the second day. One of them must have seen one of the guards, well the banging on the glass was loud enough to attract the attention of others. By the end of the week there was a sea of those things pushing against the walls. Each new one seemed to attract ten new ones. We decided that the windows in the front of the store would not hold for much longer. We started to move as much food, and medecine, and well everything we could up onto the roof. Maybe if we hid up there for awhile those things would think they had won or something and move on. We were on the roof when John stopped talking. He was sweating all the time, and threw up a lot. He was cold to the touch most of the time, other times tho he had the worst fever I have ever seen. I have only ever treated my kids and husband when sick with flue, One time when JJ was sick he broke his leg and I had to take care of that. I was way out of my depth, we all were. We were on the roof for four days when the walls started to come down. Those things banged and banged on the walls until they came down. I watched through a hatch in the roof as they poured in. They searched aisle to aisle looking, searching for us. One of the cops must have freaked out, he started shooting into the crowd. They took it and didnt even blink. They were in the worst condition. Falling apart in some cases. It was horrible, and the stink was even worse. by this time John was pretty bad, he wasnt coherent. He mumbled, threw up, and sometimes cried. It was horrible watching the man I loved go on like this. The infection on his hand had gotten worse it was all black now, and there were red streaks all up his arms. Over time our numbers whittle down. One of the guards got too close to the edge of the roof and fell off. He probably would have survived if those things werent there. THere were a couple of suicides. and the unpleasantness. by the end of it there were only 18 of us left. I dont like to talk about what happened to John. He went quietly one night. Luckily for me and the kids we werent in with him. He woke up like one of those things.He attacked a few people and had to beput to sleep. It was horrible and I do not like to talk about it.


On about the second week something bad happened down in the store. for some reason a fire broke out. We don't know what caused it, but it happened. We hadto huddle on the roof on the far side praying that the fire would go out. Which it luckily did. after it died down we checked down the hatch. It had gutted the bakery, and a lot of the store on that side. The fire sprinklers must have still worked because the floor was covered in water.
It was some time on the third week that allan saw us and led most of those things away. when he came back around with the car he loaded up as many as he could carry and made our way to the stream building. There are only a few of us left. Me, my two sons made it through fine. there are about 8 of us left from that horror.