I was awakened to the sounds of the complex in a tizzy. Everybody was running to the office building which is the tallest structure in the complex. From the fifth floor (which is the top) you can see all the way down to where the highway passes. But more important, you can see the entire area surrounding the fence. You can’t actually see up against the trailer rigs, but you can see that there was a mob of zombies all the way around us!
At first we thought they might all be frozen. Tom and a couple of others came back and informed us that, while they seemed a bit slower to react, they were still very much active and aware. Also, there are just too many to dispatch.
Our noise yesterday obviously drew them. I told Tom what I noticed about their behavior and how if one (or more) start after something, others follow, whether they know what it is they are chasing or not.
From the vantage point of the fifth floor, we can see singles and packs heading this way from every direction. Eventually their approach was blocked from sight by the trees. Only time will tell as to how many of those things will fall in line like lemmings. Hopefully they’ll get distracted in the woods.
* * * * *
It is almost sunset. The snow has turned to rain. There are thousands of them now and we can hear the moaning even if you are inside the buildings. That noise can only be drawing more of them.
The good news is that the barricade of trailer rigs is holding just fine. They don’t have much leverage, and are squeezed in tight. Each one seems to know that a meal is in the vicinity. But, and this is a plus once we talked it over, they are like dogs inasmuch that they push against each other as much if not more than they do against the barricade.
Monday, February 4
The number of zombies seems to have doubled! That, of course, is the bad news. The good news is there doesn’t seem to be any more coming. There are a couple of stragglers on the highway, but from the vantage point we have, it looks as if every one of those things in the vicinity has come and are standing their undead vigil outside our fence.
It has been decided that the office building is where we will all live. Most of us were already there. A handful of people had taken up in some of the warehouses. But everybody sees the logic in living in one central location so that, if something bad happens, we are all together. Also, this allows us to use only one of the five back-up generators for power
We have not found any fuel surplus. So we only run the generator when absolutely necessary. There had been a plan to make a run to seek out a diesel tanker-truck. Of course that has been put on hold.
I found a guitar (actually a bunch of them) and couldn’t help myself. I was sitting on a stack of big-screen televisions just getting my hands used to the feel again and had a small crowd in a matter of minutes.
I met all the kids. I guess a couple of the folks here got a make-shift class going to keep the kids occupied. Greg Parker, I guess he used to be a math teacher at Portland State, and Crystal Johnson, ironically, a school bus driver, have a class set up. They were in some meeting room and heard me. Greg asked if I would be willing to teach a music class. I’ve got nothing better to do.
Greg turns out to be a pretty funny guy in a dry-humor sort of way. He’s not at all what any math teacher I ever had was like. He has a million jokes, and they are all awful. But the kids love him. He says he was a vegetarian before all of this. He had a nice greenhouse and lived mostly off of his own organically grown produce. I really like the guy, but I realized that before all this, I would’ve not only never associated with this guy I probably would have mocked him and his lifestyle. Now, I see a man who is doing what he can to help, doing the last thing I would think of in the middle of this chaos.
Then there is Crystal. She is a fifty-something gal, about five-feet tall and four-feet wide. She is gruff and her voice is full of the gravel you expect from a former chain smoker. She can tell you, to the hour, how long it has been since she had a cigarette. Crystal knows a lot of jokes, too, but I am pretty sure the kids haven’t heard even one. The couple she has told me made me blush.
* * * * *
Everybody is pretty sure we heard the same thing. Up in the clouds a jet screamed by! It was headed south, but it was definitely not commercial. That has to mean that at least some of our military is left. Right?
The zombies even reacted. The horde outside seemed to get restless, and there was a lot of shifting. But none of them left.
Also, one rather disturbing bit of news. The zombies have added a new sound. At first we thought it was real. In fact, a good number of us ended up searching the perimeter. That is how we know it is them. The sound comes from all over. It seems as if very few actually do it…yet. But that sound, besides how unnerving it is, will get somebody killed.
There.
I just heard another do it. The sound carries on the night breeze.
The sound of a baby cry.
Tuesday, February 5
I had my first music class with the kids today. There are seven school-aged children in the complex. All of them were very excited to be learning guitar. There are three girls and four boys: Andrea, sixteen, is the oldest; Waylon is sixteen, but he is a few months younger and apparently Andrea reminds him often; Jeremiah is fourteen and taller than all the adults including Tom, but skinny as a rail; Marty is thirteen and the quickest learner so far; Alise and Claire are both twelve and don’t seem fazed by what is going on. I think they both have ADHD, but I’m no professional so…; and last is little Joey who is ten, and scared of his shadow. He never once strummed his guitar.
I talked to Greg and Crystal and they say he follows the other kids around, shows up for class and just sits. When the others leave, he follows. He hasn’t said a single word that either of them have heard. Greg said that Robin Stayton, a young woman of about twenty-two showed up with him. When they got here, she had been bitten and he was covered in blood. None of it his own. It is obvious he saw something up close. Before Robin died she managed to say that Joey was her neighbor’s kid and that his folks were both gone. That is the full extent of what we know about the boy. One other thing I’ve noticed, he will follow the kids to the door, but he will not go outside. He’ll just sit down and wait for them to come back. If we ever have to run, that may become a problem.
People spent a lot of time outside today. It was only partly cloudy and I think they were hoping for another fly over. It never happened. We have noticed something different though and I’m not sure it is good. It was actually Al Godwin who noticed. Al is another case of this event making strange bedfellows. Al is an eighteen-year-old black male who arrived still wearing handcuffs. Apparently he escaped from the back of a State Highway Patrol cruiser after watching the officer who had arrested him get taken down by a pack of zombies at that roadblock I saw on Highway 26. Anyways, what Al noticed, and now we all do, is that we’ve not heard any gunfire in two days. It had become such a normal part of the day (and night) that we had tuned it out. After everybody thought it over real hard, we realized when the last bursts had been heard. It was the day after moving the rigs.