October 23rd - Sunrise
Dear Miss Megan,
I will not drink today.
I spent most of the night talking to Steve. I feel bad for him. He don’t deserve none of this.
The other two didn’t really click with me. Kurt’s just pissed off at the world. Like, no shit motherfucker we all are. I always have been.
Brit’s so fragile I’m afraid to talk to her. You can tell she’s still crying a lot. She touched up her makeup this morning which made Penny and Allison laugh and say something about finding boyfriends.
But Steve and I laid down some cardboard off to one side of the garage so as not to disturb nobody and talked late into the night. Not sure we would have kept anyone up, though. Penny and Allison slept like the dead and I don’t think Brit or Kurt even closed their eyes.
Steve’s 23 and went to school in Chicago. He just graduated from Northwestern and works in marketing. Says he's got a job at a movie studio. I asked him if he did the posters but he said no. Still, it sounds like he’s got a good thing going.
Steve was in a big high rise building when all the shit went down. Inside, watching the news all morning. He heard that there were those dead eyed people all over the world. East coast. Europe. Everywhere. Doctors didn’t have no answers. Politicians pretty much disappeared. Nobody knows what the fuck’s going on.
He said the traffic on the freeways was at a standstill and people were getting pulled out their cars so he didn’t want to risk driving home. Steve lives up in the valley and didn’t know how long it would take him to get back or if there was anything to get back to. Said he’s just got a two bedroom with a roommate. Looked kinda sheepish about that, like it was something to be ashamed of. I told him that sounds alright to me.
Steve got quiet after I said that. Then he smiled and said I was lucky. Said I must know all sorts of helpful stuff. Like how to sleep outside. Find food. Make shelter. He said I was set up for success in this exciting new market and then he laughed.
I don’t know how to feel about that.
October 23rd - A little after noon
Dear Miss Megan,
I will not drink today.
Sometime this morning, not long after the sun come up, there was an LAPD cruiser circling near the garage with its speaker going. The cop repeated the same thing over and over. “Survivors report to Blessed Sacrament immediately. All survivors report to Blessed Sacrament.”
There was no traffic so you could hear the cop’s voice bounce off the buildings. I guess they was making too much noise for the folks that turned sour (or whatever you want to call it). I heard them banging on the cruiser door through the cop’s microphone. Then the cop says to their partner, “Go go go,” and the speaker cut off.
After they left, Kurt grabbed his stuff. Picked up his little messenger bag. Unrolled his suit jacket. Then he stood there looking at us like we were holding him up. “Are we going or what?”
Penny and Allison gave him a skeptical look and it seemed like that pissed Kurt off. “Come on! Let’s go! What are we waiting here for?”
Penny glared at him, saying, “You think the cops can help? They can’t even drive the neighborhood.”
Well, that pissed Kurt off pretty bad. He pursed his lips and paced like he was counting to ten in his head. He looked like shit. Bags under his eyes. Sweat on his forehead. Just one night outside and he was cooked. But I guess the counting to ten didn’t work cause Kurt basically exploded.
He, Penny and Allison fought like cats for a bit - yellin and cussin and all that. Steve gave me a look, and I could tell that he was waiting for me to step in and say something. So I did.
I said, “Guys, we’re just gonna make this situation worse if those things hear us. Now, I lean towards the girls on this one. But if there’s enough people who want to go I’m willing to check out the church just to know what my options are. We’re about 10 or 12 blocks away. We can walk together if you’re interested.”
Penny and Allison just shrugged that off, which I understood. I didn’t like the idea of a shelter, either. But Brit grabbed her phone and her purse. Then Steve stood up and grabbed his shit, too. I told Penny that if I wasn’t back by night they should join us. She just shook her head, gave me a hug, and told me to watch myself.
Allison whispered in my ear before I walked out. “Don't let 'em get you killed.”
October 23rd - Afternoon.
Dear Miss Megan,
I will not drink today.
We climbed down the pallets into hell. The sky was red, like during the wildfires. Smoke hung everywhere and there was carnage in the streets. Everywhere we went smelled like burning plastic and rotting meat. Looking down Sunset, I saw cars on fire in the distance and groups of black-eyed people stumbling down the street.
I could tell Kurt was scared by the way he moved. He was all hunched at the shoulders. Tense, like he was ready to flinch. He was impatient for us to follow him, but he didn’t know which way to go. Meanwhile, Brit and Steve were waiting for someone to lead the way, so I told everybody it was safer if we got off the street.
We snuck into the hotel lobby next to us, then crept from building to building. We were lucky it was mid-morning when the shit hit the fan. Front doors were either left open or smashed. There was a coffee shop where we took some day-old bagels.
Block by block, we rucked through an infested ghost town. We saw some black-eyed people on the streets, usually in threes or fours. Most were injured. Broken legs and ankles. Gunshot wounds. Some had dark, black blood dried on their hands and mouths. There was a long-haired man with no arms walking real fast down the middle of the road. He had broken bones poking out of big black holes in his shoulders, but no expression on his face.
October 23rd - Night.
Dear Miss Megan,
I will not drink today.
Blessed Sacrament sits at Sunset and Cherokee. They do a soup kitchen so I guess I know the area pretty well. There’s a construction site catty-corner across the street from the church where they was building apartments. So I hustled over and waved the others through the gate, figuring the fencing around the site would keep the freaks out so long as they weren’t motivated to come in and get us.
I led the others inside a dark, half-built building. It looked like the crew had been hanging drywall when it all went down. The walls were mostly in place with a few gaps where you could still see the bare lumber.
Kurt wanted to start talking once we were inside but I shushed him up quick. There was a stairway in the corner that led to the second floor. Upstairs, we found an apartment unit about ninety percent complete, so we stacked sawhorses and sheets of drywall across the doorway to seal ourselves inside.
We were across the intersection from the church, up a floor, and looking out an eight foot hole in the bare lumber where they was gonna put a window. Steve walked right up and stuck his head out to look but I pulled him back inside.
There was a folding table nearby and I got Steve to help me move it real quietly to the center of the room to stand on, back in the darkness of the room where there was no chance of being seen.
I stood up on that table and my knees about buckled from the sight of it all. The strip was overrun. Black-eyes were everywhere, clumped in groups of a dozen or more. Filling the street like it was a festival or a parade.
Past them, I could see the church surrounded by metal fencing. It was new and looked like they put it up in a hurry. On the other side of the fence were the cops. I could see them moving up and down, holding the line. The black-eyes would cluster at the chain-link, pushing it in, and the cops would beat them back through the fence.
In the military we called this “fubar,” Miss Megan.
I stepped off the table and the others took their turns. After they was all done, we huddled up for a big argument.
Kurt was ready to go to the church. Pronto. Said he wanted to cause a distraction. He wanted to “make an explosion” to get the creepers away from the front gate. Then we’d run over and the cops would let us in.
That was Kurt’s smart idea.
I didn’t like this plan. At all. I said we needed to get back to the garage before sundown. There weren’t no way we were making “an explosion,” and we definitely weren’t making it into the church, and even if we did, that didn't make us safe.
So we kind of shouted under our breaths at each other for a while but Brit and Steve were still undecided. That’s when Kurt lost all his patience and put his hands up, and stopped whispering.
“What are we doing? Why are we listening to this guy? You want to live like him?” He was pointing his finger at me but glaring at Steve. Kurt wasn’t afraid to get mean, I’ll give him that. He moved his face just in front of Brit’s. “You want to piss on the fucking stairs? Go ahead. Eat garbage with drug addicts. I don’t give a shit. I’m sleeping in a bed tonight.”
He turned and left.
Brit didn’t even look at me. She just followed.
Steve didn’t say nothing at first. Just stuck his hands in his khakis and stared at the doorway. We heard Brit and Kurt walk down the stairs and rattle through the gate at the back of the construction site.
Once they were gone, Steve looked at me and said, “Can I stay with you?” I didn’t know what to say so he kept going. “We can’t go to the church. And I don’t know how to get home right now. I think it’s safer if I stay with you. Is that okay?”
I couldn’t say nothing. I couldn’t swallow. I guess I got a little caught up by his question. But I held it together good enough to nod and say, "Sure."
Before leaving, we stood on the table to watch out for Kurt and Brit.
Kurt had took his undershirt off and tied it to a piece of wire he must have found on the construction site. We watched him sneak over to a broke down F150. The truck had swerved into oncoming traffic and the windshield was all smashed in with the driver side door hanging open. Kurt moved real quiet and kept the truck between him and the black-eyes in the intersection.
When he got to the truck he reached in and flipped the gas cap release. Then he stuffed his shirt down the gas tank and that’s when I knew they weren’t going to make it.
Kurt pulled the shirt, wet with gas, halfway out the tank and lit it up with a cigarette lighter, then crammed it all in there before he run off to hide with Brit behind a Jersey barrier. Well, the flames took hold first thing and the smoke billowed out quick. Thick, black smoke that hung in the air. Awful smelling. And the wind was pushing it towards Brit and Kurt.
We watched from above as the smoke engulfed them. They were fighting for air for over a minute before the flames finally ruptured the gas tank.
The resulting fireball knocked a couple black-eyes to the street, but it wasn't the Hollywood special effect that Kurt had in mind. It didn’t make a dent in the overall crowd. Sure as hell got their attention though.
Blinded by the smoke, Kurt and Brit made a break for it when they heard the truck explode. I don’t think they knew what they were running into until they were already in the intersection. By the time the smoke cleared they were surrounded.
I made Steve look away as the black-eyes descended on Brit and Kurt. The bastards looked like fish, the way they circled, each taking a piece. And the cops just watched through the fence.
I wish it hadn’t taken so long.
October 24th - morning
Dear Miss Megan.
I will not drink today.
Last night, Steve and I got back to Penny and Allison’s parking garage just after sunset.
We had a time getting back. The black-eyed people was roving the streets like shadows, crawling all over everything. The fire seemed to excite them.
I took Steve on a detour and we snuck through the back of a CVS. We found some cans of baked beans, some trail mix, a few tins of Spam and some of those Progresso soups. We put them all in two backpacks they had in the back-to-school aisle and snuck towards the door with a gallon of water in each hand.
We passed the wine aisle and I stopped. I was looking down it at all the bottles hiding in the dark and thinking how these were wild circumstances. How I'd probably focus better with a drink. How the world was fucking ending and who gives a shit.
And then I thought about you, Miss Megan.
Steve was up ahead of me, walking toward the door. I took one last look at the bottles. No one could have stopped me from taking them. But I didn't.
When we showed Penny and Allison what we brought, they hugged us. Then we all ate and talked. We got a feeling these black-eyed people won’t last for long. They’ll starve. Wander off. Die of exposure. But they won’t last. Not most of them, anyway. They weren’t built for these streets. Not like us.
So we gotta outlast them. We all decided to stay here in the garage as long as we can. Just the four of us. Or maybe let in a few more. Not many, but some.
I told them I’d get more supplies when we needed. And that I’d find a better way in and out than the pallets. I think we’re going to be alright for a little while.
I wish you were here, Miss Megan. I wish I could keep you safe. But I know you probably ain’t out there no more.
You saw me when I was invisible. You saved me. So I’ll save some for you.
I promise.
And I will not drink today.