The Basement

There are rules to surviving out here. Today I broke all of them. That's why I'm stuck here in this room listening to the dead men scratch at the walls. I wonder how long it will be before one of those rotting fingers finds a handhold and starts pulling. I keep myself from nodding off by imagining a swarm of hands tearing through one of the windows, or the door flying off its hinges to reveal a wall of rotting faces.

Thing is, though, I think that the waiting will get to me first. The sound of the floor boards creaking as they shamble past, and the smell Ð'- God what a smell! Like road kill in the hot summer air, so sweetly sour that with every breath it leaves you on the verge of gagging. The scratching and moaning, we can't forget about the never ending wailing and clawing. That's why I'm writing in this journal that I was planning to use as toilet paper. Hopefully, it will keep me sane long enough for me toÐ'... Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's get back to the rules.

Rule one: never underestimate the enemy.

This was the number one problem in the early days. People would see the zombies coming and instead of thinking tactically they would stand their ground and keep firing. After all, isn't there always time to run? Besides, it only takes one head shot and no more deadboy! We lost half the National Guard that way.

First of all, there isn't always time to run, because if you see one zombie, there are usually at least four of them that you're NOT seeing. So while you're blasting away at one deadboy, a second one is coming up from the other direction to take a chunk out of you. Second of all, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take a simple head shot to kill a zombie. It's got to be through the brain. Half the freaking amateurs these days don't realize that and completely lose it when the zombie they just shot still dogs them, sans face.

Perfect example is the screw up that got me here. The C.O. of my guard unit Ð'- swear to god I don't know where they're finding these people Ð'- has us out sweeping the perimeter for deadboys. He sent us into what's left of Culver City. College-boy figures that since it's the dead of winter the zombies will be less active.

Yeah right.

At first, things were pretty quiet. We found a few of their nests and took them out with a little of the old shake and bake (incendiary grenades for those who don't know). Thing is you can never be too sure. I've seen some of those deadboys walk through the flames like it was nothing.

We also scrounged for supplies wherever we could. It's not a rule, but it's a good policy to remember that you can never have too much ammo or Spam. It was dusk, and we were ready to go, when all of a sudden there's this howl in the air, like a whole chorus of the deadboys screaming at once. I knew what that meant, so did a few old-timers in our unit. There was an entire horde out there.

Rule two: never, under any circumstances, engage a whole horde with less than an entire division. We didn't have too much choice about breaking this rule. A wall of white swept over us from the east, something half-snowstorm and half-avalanche. Blinded, we're all shouting, trying to stay together. Some of the newbies are panicking, our C.O. especially, firing off random shots into the squall. I know better, I just hold my position.

This is just foreplay.

Just as fast as the storm was on us, it was gone. The only difference now is that we're all knee deep in snow and there's a small army of the deadboys advancing on us. It was like they just came out of nowhere. I hear our new C.O. sobbing, he's telling us to fall back to the transport.

Here's where I broke rule three: there's strength in numbers. You see, I knew from bitter experience that the first thing zombies seem to do is take out your means of rapid retreat. I also knew that our 90-day wonder wasn't going to listen to me in his current state of mind, so I deserted. Running through the snow wasn't easy, and I had to pop a couple of the deadboys that were somehow burrowing through the snow after me. I still don't know where they learned that little trick.

I figured the best thing to do was to hole up and let the zombies fight it out with the other members of my unit. Once they've fed they tend to get lethargic, kind of like a real person twenty minutes after Thanksgiving dinner. As soon as the screaming stopped, I'd slip out.

You probably guessed, that's rule four: don't let yourself get cornered.

I found a building that didn't look like it had been used. It looked like some kind of a hospital clinic, one of those little one-floor jobs that people with no medical insurance had to go to. The sounds of the firefight were just starting to reach me when I got inside and shoved as much crap as I could in front of the door. It wasn't much of a barricade but it would delay them long enough for me to get out the back if I needed too.

Before I could relax, I did a quick room-to-room search. I made sure to check the basement first, the deadboys love crawlspaces for some reason. The battle was still continuing. I could hear them fighting it out from street to street. Right then I half made up my mind to get back out there and die with the rest of my team. The rustling made me forget all that.

It wasn't until I came up from the basement that I first heard it. My hands went icy with sweat as a continued the search. I half-expected to find one of the deadboys sitting in the waiting room, flipping through an old copy of Newsweek.

Instead I found some girl, barely