4/30/2014

4/30/2014

Holy... shit... I'm writing this in a closet with very little light because right now, I'm hiding from my parents. I have one hand cupped over the flashlight to minimize how much light they can see under the door. It was a reflex action that made me grab the journal in the first place, now I'm just writing to calm my nerves, and lemme tell ya, it ain't workin'.

First off, I woke up this morning to a storm siren. The power was out in the house, so my alarm clock never went off, and I was late for school. I quickly got dressed, pretty much ignoring the storm siren, how stupid I was. As soon as I hit the bottom step, my dad grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the kitchen. He and my mom were both standing around the kitchen table, listening to a battery-powered radio. Even though I'll probably never forget what I heard, I'm still gonna write it down here:

“As of six a.m. eastern standard time, the continental United States is now under martial law. Our nation's borders to Canada and Mexico are now being patrolled by the respective militaries of those nations, and neither are accepting American refugees. All law enforcement is now to be considered an extension of the federal government. For reasons yet to be explained, the bodies of the recently dead are rising and attacking all living creatures. As of this time, we have no idea how widespread this phenomenon is, and are taking measures to contain it here. Do not leave your current location unless an evacuation convoy arrives to shuttle you to the nearest shelter. Do not answer your door to strangers or anyone who is incapable of coherent speech.”

After that, the station just rebroadcasted that message for about an hour, which is why I remember it so clearly. Even so, I don't think I would have forgotten after just the one time hearing it.

I ran up stairs to my bedroom to grab my cell phone. It's a decision I regret now, because if I hadn't run upstairs, I could have been downstairs to help my parents when our dead neighbor walked in through our unlocked back door.

Unlike 99.999% of all teenagers on the planet, I don't take my phone to school with me. Anyone I'd call with it is already in the building, why would I need it? Until I come home from school, that phone sits on the very desk that this notebook sleeps on. I barely had a good grip on it before I started dialing Karen. She answered with a very panicked voice. They had heard the broadcasts earlier, and already had a close call with one of the dead.

Remember that homeless guy living in the cardboard box behind the resturaunt? He had walked around to the front of the building and knocked on the door. Karen told me that blood was trickling down his chin from his mouth, and there was still some of it on the door glass from where he pressed his face into it. Mr. Hammond took a soda can, dropped some dice into it, tied it to a string, and then hung it out a second story window on the side of the building, then started shaking it to lure the dead homeless man away from the front doors. Karen and her dad are both keeping to the second floor, and all the doors on the first floor are locked. The front door can only be unlocked from inside, and only four people have keys to the back door: Karen, her dad, me and Sasha.

When I heard my mom screaming, I abruptly hung up the phone and ran downstairs as fast as I could, tripping on the last step and falling face-first to the floor. I quickly got back up and just in time to help my dad pull our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Ferguson, off of my mom. Just as we got the old lady off of her, Mrs. Ferguson took a bite out of Mom's shoulder. Dad pushed her out the door and kicked her back, then shut and locked the door. After that, he looked at me and almost scowled. I was the last one in through the back door, I should have locked it, Mom getting bitten was my fault.

Dad and I grabbed Mom and carried her upstairs. We laid her on my bed, because mine was the closest room to the stairs, and I held one of my shirts to her shoulder to hold down the bleeding while Dad ran into the bathroom to get the cloth bandages. When he got back in my room, he set to work bandaging her wound, but he was a little too late. Mom died just after Dad finished with the bandages.

Sixteen years of life, I never heard my dad cry. Then, when I finally did, he was dead five minutes later. His crying was obviously an omen, that it was time he left this world. Whatever was the cause, five minutes after my mom died, she sat up and bit Dad on the arm, just as Mrs. Ferguson had bitten her on the shoulder. Dad pushed her away, then fell to the floor, clutching at his arm.

After that, it was pure reflex. I just grabbed this notebook and the pen that went with it and locked myself in my closet. Not shortly after that, Mom must have gotten up from the bed, because she was pounding on the closet door, like she'd seen me get in here, and then Dad joined her about ten minutes after that. I've been in this closet ever since. I've considered calling Karen, but I'm afraid they might here me. The door is locked, but who says they can't break the door down if they pound against it hard enough? About two hours ago, they stopped pounding on the door, so they must think I'm not in here. I've been watching their shadows moving under the door, hopefully they leave my room soon.