Tiffany Crystal's Forecast for the day:

What happens when a person with some common sense wakes up to a “zombie apocalypse”? Shit gets done, that’s what.

Spoiler: the dog doesn’t die.

Please note: this work of fiction involves a lot of swear words/cussing and adult themes. Kiddos beware.

April 20th
Day 3
Noon.

Well, I didn’t get eaten. Ate? Whatever. I’m still alive. No zombies broke down the door or the wall, so I’m good.

I’ve done a little more research and I’ve decided that I am most probably screwed. Royally.

The only real way to get out of NYC involves bridges or tunnels. Both are perfect targets for bandits, and this is NY, so you know there will be bandits. There’s a ferry, but yeah, I’m not counting on that.

My plan is still to get a move on soon. Live or die, I can’t just sit here. Food will run out soon enough, my parents will be worried, and there’s no telling how long my phone will still work. I’m giving myself another two days – tops – and  then I’m out of here.

I ate before I wrote this. So I’m off to check out the other neighbors. I’m starting with the thump-thump side. The dragging sound is still going on on the other side. I’m tempted to skip that apartment completely, but it would be good to practice fighting these things. I’ve been watching them outside and they don’t move very fast, and they don’t seem to be any stronger than a regular human, so that’s good at least. If I’m gonna be out there fighting them though, I need some idea of how they act when there’s food nearby.

Also, I’m getting really tired of calling them ‘zombies’. It’s so cliché, even if that is what the news people are calling them. And fuck that PC crap. They are not “the deceased”…they’re “oh fuck this”, that’s what they are. Too long though. Need a shorter name. I’ll think about it later. I have my belt on, it’s time to go.

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5:13pm

What I know now:

1. The trolls (my new name for the zombies) can move somewhat fast when they want to. Not much faster than a jog, but that can still be a bad thing.
2. Hammers are good in a pinch, but baseball bats are much better for playing whack-a-troll.
3. They’re not good with door handles. If the door opens away from them, and the handle is one of those long ones, not a round handle, there’s a chance they can open it, but they apparently lack the coordination to actually grab the knob and turn it.
4. From the way they shuffle their feet, it’s not likely they’ll be climbing any stairs. They might be able to drag themselves up a flight, if they’re motivated enough, but I’m guessing they’d have to be damn near starving. Our apartment building has an elevator and a stair well. Guess which one we’ll be using?

Oh yeah. And now there’s a “we”. The thump-thump apartment wasn’t empty.

Backing up a bit:

Remember I said I was checking the thump-thump apartment first? Yeah. The door was locked. I knocked…wasn’t really expecting anyone to answer, but this is my life.

The door opened, I got jerked in through the opening and the door was slammed shut behind me before I could say “howdy fucking do?”

I’ll spare you the details, but basically her and the kids are okay.

Now.

They had ran out of food, and Abby (the mom) was too scared to scavenge. It took a while to convince her to let me go back to my place, but once she saw all the food I brought back, she started crying. I hated putting a dent in my supplies already, but I’m not heartless, and they needed it. I’ll just have to replace them before we leave.

Also, new change of plans:

We’re going to risk the ferry. Abby used to be one of the drivers, so she can drive the boat if there’s no one available. She also came up with some good ideas for barter items. Once I got rid of the troll, we left the boys alone in her apartment and went through the apartments again, collecting things like coffee, pot plants, sugar, you know, stuff like that (how the hell I missed the weed, I have no fucking clue).

She’s closer to the stairs, so I moved all of my supplies into her apartment and started loading up the hiking backpack and the other suitcase. Since there are two adults now, she’s going carry one, and I’ll take the other. Same thing with the suitcases. We also loaded up the kids backpacks with light stuff. The oldest one is 10, and the younger is 8, so there’s not too much they can carry but they can carry enough to be useful.

Also: they’re both in little league. Baseball. So yes, baseball bats. We’re still somewhat screwed, but at least we’ll go down swinging (oh shut up, I’m hilarious).

Dinner time.

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8:10pm

I’m writing this while Abby’s getting the kids ready for bed. As soon as they’re settled, Abby and I are going to see about raiding upstairs. She tried suggesting raiding downstairs since the trolls can’t climb stairs very well, but I pointed out that 1) we haven’t heard any thumping around upstairs, so it’s more than likely empty, and 2) the trolls are shit with doors anyway, so even if we did have to run, as long as we make it to the stairwell, we should be okay.

Still going to try and make a run for it on Saturday. That gives us two days to make sure the kids are ready, and we are ready.

Just have to call dad and let him know about the new development. And to suggest running back into town for things like milk and eggs. Perishable food first, dad! Gonna remind him to pick up seeds and stuff, too. If he’s going to build a wall, we’re gonna need to be somewhat self-sustainable. That means growing our own food.

He has enough land, it shouldn’t be a problem to set aside a good part of it for farming. Course, knowing him, he’s probably already working on it.

Real quick note: news thing came on while we were eating. Apparently the whole “destroy their heart” business is a bust. It does a lot of damage, but it doesn’t kill them outright.

Still don’t know if it affects animals.

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12:14 am

Abby and I raided upstairs. On the upside, I was right and it was deserted (also, the stairwells were empty. I’m not looking forward to going down 8 flights of stairs, but I’m not trusting the elevator), so we managed to score a lot of useful crap. One of the apartments had a bike. Another had a whole carton of cigarettes, not even opened yet.

We bagged the crap up as we went and left it by the stairs. We split the apartments up between us (don’t worry, we checked each one together first – all the nooks and crannies and other possible hiding spots for trolls. The apartments were all clear), and managed to knock them out pretty well.

We ended up checking the apartments twice, though. Abby went through some and missed stuff that I thought was important, and I missed stuff she thought was important, but the overall haul was good.

We have thick jackets for the kids, which should provide some protection at least, and a shit-ton of batteries and flashlights now.

Abby used one of the people’s laptops to look up nearby bike stores. There’s one not too far from the ferry. We’re not sure how the roads are going to be though, so we’re not sure if it’s worth the risk. I’m hoping we’ll find some abandoned ones along the way so we don’t have to worry about it. I’m more interested in the pharmacies between here and there. Antibiotics are going to be really important, especially with the kids.

She also checked to see if there was any news on what streets were safe, if the ferry was still running, if the subway was still running.

The reports are kinda good? It appears most of the trolls are on the far north side, and the far south side. We’re right in the middle. Abby said she’s been watching the streets since this whole thing went down, and she hasn’t seen that many walking around. The theory is that most of them are either stuck in the buildings (not good, but kinda good?), or because everyone panicked and ran, there were less people here to turn into the trolls. Either way, it’s kinda good news. We only have to make it a couple miles to the ferry, and once we’re across the bay, I’m going to try and keep us away from the roads.

Abby is still balking at the hiking idea, but if we stay away from roads, that means less humans. Less humans = less trolls.

We’ll still have to make supply runs every once in awhile, but if we’re smart about it, we should be fine.

Let’s see, what else did we find?

Ah, one of the apartments had art stuff in it. We grabbed a couple bottles of turpentine and paint thinner (I thought they were the same thing?), and a bunch of cleaners. Gonna try our hands at making molotov cocktails.

We also possibly found a way to make the suitcase wheels be a lot less noisy on the sidewalk. The artist guy/girl/whatever had a hot glue gun sitting out on their counter (unplugged, thankfully). Abby says she has some shoes the boys outgrew (shit, another issue we’ll have to work around…). We’re going to cut the soles into strips and hot glue them around the wheels. It’d be great if we could get one of those shopping carts and bring it inside so we could do the same thing with it, but somehow I don’t think it’d be quite as effective. Too much metal clanging around. Unless…if we wrapped the metal parts with blankets or clothes, that might help keep the sound down.

That supposes we can even get our hands on a cart. I mean, it should be easy to do, but we’ll have to see.

In the meantime, I’m making a “shopping” list of stuff we need before we take off. Or at least, before we get out of the city.

• more duct tape (can never have too much)
• medicines, even just over the counter stuff would be good
• SHOES. with all the walking we’ll be doing, we’re going to need good shoes
• sunscreen
• bug spray
• ROPE!
• map/road atlas (printing off google maps, but it would still be better to have an actual road map on us)
• more baseball bats/hammers/weapons in general
• bleach

Things that would be ideal, but not 100% necessary:

• fruit
• some kind of wagon/sleigh thing we can carry all this stuff in once we get to the woods/offroad.
• saw
• ax
• another tent (we found some tarp we can jerry rig, but an actual tent would be so much better)
• hats
• prescription meds

 

That’s it for now. I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting, but I need sleep. I’ve been up since around 11, and it’s after midnight now. Abby says the kids usually wake up pretty early. She’s been working on them though. Having them practice being really quiet, grabbing their backpacks and running to hide in the bathroom. Things like that.

They’re really good. If they do half as good on the road, we might actually survive this crap.

See you tomorrow.