Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Seventh Entry: You've Got Mail

July 15

She’s alive.

They turned the internet servers back on last night, and so first thing this morning I tried going online. There’s not much to see, most sites come back as not found. I was unable to go to Virtual Flat, WNN, Wolf News, Google, Me TV, etc.

I was able to access an imageboard that I'm not proud to admit that I used to frequent. I don't suppose should really surprise me that the electronic equivalent of the Mos Eisly Cantina is still up and running. There were actually some recent posts, and they were every bit as senseless and useless as they ever were, and why should the end of the world change that? The highlight would have to be a photoshopped CD cover for an album titled “Chocolate Brain” by Tay Zombay. I have to admit, I lol'd.

I also found that one of the webcomics I used to read, “Aloha, London!” was still up. There hasn’t been a new comic posted since everything went to crap, but there were comments under the last comic’s blog post. There were some by the comic’s creator, Scott Jenkins, from back towards the beginning, but there were some more recent ones, some including links to other sites that were still active at the time of posting. Some that still were this morning.

I found reports that some of the undead seem to move with actual purpose, like they were being controlled somehow. One website went into detail about how it was a government experiment that had gotten out of control, while another said that it was God’s punishment to Earth for allowing homosexuals to live. One thing was very clear though, and that is that this is not going away, there are people still fighting, but it doesn’t sound like we’re winning.

It seems that the big cities are like something out of George Romero’s nightmares. People flooded into the big cities thinking the government would defend them, but they didn’t. The government was too busy using what’s left of the National Guard (meaning those who actually reported for duty and were not stationed in Iraq) to try and save itself. The military defended their own bases, and sure, they let survivors in, but they left the big cities to their own devices.

There was a site that had the story of the fall of San Francisco. Once it was announced that the military was not going to come defend the city, and that people should evacuate everyone tried to leave at once. The roads became instantly clogged, and violence ensued. People killed in the road rage got back up, and the infection spread like wildfire. Even trying to leave their cars behind proved difficult because there was not enough room between the cars to try and evade the zeds.

The last post on the site was over a month ago. The writer said the power had just gone out, and that he didn’t know if he would get a chance to post again, but that he was going to try and get out of the city before he ran out of supplies. I wonder if he made it.

All of that aside though, the biggest shock was when I finally checked my e-mail. It was actually a bit comforting to discover that someone somewhere is still sending spam, but my concerns right now are a bit greater than the size of my erection, or getting a nice “replica” watch.

There was one e-mail that got my attention though. It was from a week ago. It was from Sharon. She is still out there, at least as of a week ago:


From: Manager@HotelMajestic.trv
To: GeekFreak6942@Mallville.us


I know this is probably pointless, but I have to try.

I’m alive, and Jimmy Chen is with me, but his leg is hurt bad, and I cannot move him all the way back to the mall by myself..

Marcus is dead.

I don’t know if anyone made it back or not, but we were attacked while on a scavenging run by a biker gang. It’s like they appeared out of nowhere and started shooting. They didn't even try to make us give up the cars or anything, they just opened fire. We all split up and drove off in different directions. Marcus was driving, and got hit in the head.
We crashed into a telephone pole, and one of the biker’s threw a Molotov cocktail onto the car as they sped off. I was able to drag Jimmy out of the car, but the fire was too intense by the time I was able to try and get Marcus. Jimmy’s leg is broken, but we were able to make it here, The Hotel Majestic.

I’ve barricaded us in as much as I can, and so far so good. This place has solar panels on the roof, so there is some electricity during the daytime. I’m writing to you on the manager’s laptop, luckily his password was written down inside his desk drawer.

There’s no one here but the two of us, no other survivors were in the hotel, just a couple of undead I had to take out with a fire axe. There is enough food and water in the hotel’s kitchen to last us a while longer, but I lost my guns in the crash.

Luckily, the bikers haven’t been back. Jimmy says that’s not surprising, but he won’t tell me what he means; he just says “Fucking Hashmir!”, and then stops talking if I try to get him to tell me more.

Please help us if you can. The Hotel is about six miles from Mallville, on Utopia Parkway and Fountain Street. There are active roamers outside, so be careful if you are able to come.

I’ll wait for you.

See you space cowboy,
Sharon

--
Boris Telekhov
Manager
Hotel Majestic
http://www.HotelMajestic.trv


I feel like a total piece of crap now for having given up on her. She’s been out there hoping I will come to her rescue, and I’d left her for dead. Needless to say, I’ll not be telling her that. I did write her back though:

To: Manager@HotelMajestic.trv
From: GeekFreak6942@mallville.us

Thank God you’re alive.
I hope you get this. I just got your message today, and I’m going to go talk to Alex Sigler about organizing a rescue. I’m sure he’ll help you out.

Hang in there, I’m coming for you.


Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to help her. I’m going to go talk to Alex now. I’ll write more later.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Sixth Entry: Hangover

July 10

Wow, that was melodramatic of me, wasn’t it? I’m feeling a bit better now. I had a good cry, and I got really drunk. I heard that there was some sort of 4th of July presentation in the park last week, but I didn’t go.

From what I heard, the whole council was there, there were speeches and music, but no fireworks. I don’t know if this is just because we didn’t have any, or if they were afraid it would draw too much attention to Mallville from the roaming zeds out there. I’d say they were afraid of some of the living too, but it’s not like we’re a secret here anyway.

I should point out that Hashmir has banned alcohol from Mallville. I really cannot argue with his reasoning; that drunk people already under stress might do dangerous things, and all it takes is an unnoticed accidental death and suddenly we have zeds in here with us. This is perfectly reasonable, but then again so was prohibition to a point.

I know some of the scavengers smuggle in alcohol from the runs, and sell it on the sly, although God only knows what they sell it in exchange for. I have snagged myself a small personal supply, and it was a half a bottle of Crown Royal that knocked me out on the fourth. On the bright side, I did get to see fireworks; they were in my head the next morning.

We’ve now stripped the Tyranno Mart completely of food, and so have moved on to other things. Alex is still sending scavengers to the T-Mart to collect other items like clothes, toys, tools, and other mostly non-essentials. Apparently there have been some fights among survivors, and Hashmir is hoping that distractions like books, movies, and games will help keep people a little calmer.

My crew moved on to a Rex’s Club a couple of blocks away from the T-Mart. You know Rex’s Club, it’s that warehouse store where you have to be a member. Unfortunately it was not sealed up the way T-Mart was.

Someone had been living in the Rex’s Club, but they were either gone or undead before we got there, and they left the back door open when they left. It’s a shame, from the front the store looked like it was sealed, the big shutters were down, blocking the entrance and everything, but when we got to the back we not only found the door sitting open, but two zeds standing by it, almost like guards. Without even getting out of the SUV, Maria put the two zombies down with shots to the head.

The inside was a nightmare, not only did it stink due to the freezers full of rotting food, but it was infested with at least a dozen zeds (I lost count, Maria would know though). In the money count room we found signs that at least three people had been living there; there were three sleeping bags, some candles, a propane lamp, and some cans of food.

It looks like things went badly for the people there though; one of the sleeping bags and the area around it was covered in dried blood, and the other stuff was scattered around like a tornado had spawned in there. In the room I found a torn piece of notebook paper next to the coin scale on the counter in there. I am guessing it came from a diary much like mine. I did not find any other parts of the diary in there, so maybe the author took it with her (I am guessing it’s a her by the handwriting).

This is what the piece of diary said:

Tyrone’s bite is still infected, and he’s getting worse. The antibiotics don’t seem to be helping at all. I think he’s turning into one of them, but T’Nesha won’t let me put him down.

It’s not like I want Tyrone to die, but I’m not sure there’s even any of him left in there. He doesn’t respond when I talk to him anymore, and his eyes are all cloudy… he looks like one of them.

I’ll give it two more days, but if he’s not better, I’m putting him down. He wouldn’t want to become one of those things out there. Why did he have to be so damn careless? Why did he let that thing bite him?

Why couldn’t it have been T’Nesha inst


That’s where it ends, the paper is torn there.

We loaded up on sacks of dry good, rice, flour, sugar, stuff like that. Food is being pretty strictly rationed in the food court now, but even with our scavenging runs we’re going to run out eventually. I’m not looking forward to that.

In slightly more cheerful news, Alex told me that there are talks of turning Mallville’s internet server back on. Not that there’s necessarily anything outside the mall to access, but they want to redo the mall’s website to use it to distribute information more efficiently than trying to spread it through the mall’s PA system and word of mouth.

I’m not sure how I feel about this; I mean I cannot even listen to my iPod without wondering who on my playlists are still alive, so how am I going to react when I try to visit a website and nothing comes up? Of course what if stuff does come up? I can only imagine what’s on people’s VFlat pages now….

I think I’m going to go down to the store and see how Bud is doing. He’s been really down lately, not knowing what happened to his family and all. Maybe I’ll bring the rest of that bottle with me, and see if he’s up for some gaming. A little Pokemon and Crown Royal might make us both feel better.

Or at least it might make us forget for a bit.