The Zom Diary by Eddie Austin Page A

hundreds, I might account well for myself.  I sit at the table, take a quick pull off my pipe, and start to read.  Fists beat a staccato on wood echoing around me.  I do my best to ignore it, letting my mind wander into the old familiar story, aided by the smoke.  Hundreds?  What if there are thousands?  I dismiss this thought.  If there are, I am fucked.  So why worry?  Tomorrow seems like a long ways away.
     
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         Dawn comes all over me like a bum on a beach wandering past the unwary.  I have an indentation on my forehead from a piece of jerky I have slept on.  My mouth is a hot salty nightmare.  Had I really fallen asleep here at the table?  Before me, the table top is an assortment of half-chewed strips of deer flesh, a badly folded paperback, and spilled water.
         Around and below me, from everywhere comes the sound of clawing hands on wood.  Heads and arms beat at the barn relentlessly.  The doors hold.
         I stand and stretch, my body fingering the jerky impression on my forehead.  Leaning to the right and looking down and out the line of windows above the front barn door, I curse.  There must be forty of them, four bodies deep, pressing against the door.  The ones in the back row are milling about and looking expectant.  A brief thought.  It could be worse.
         I sigh, walking to the back of the loft and to the hay door.  Opening it, I peer down at the same situation on that side.  All told, probably a hundred zombies press about the barn boxing me in.  I am calm.  I have to be.  I need to think about this situation rationally.
         Scanning the horizon, I note that there is no movement.  No stragglers.  Those that are here, are here.  Where have they come from?  None look fresh, but I can also see that they do not look weathered either.  Many of them have the same complexion, for lack of a better word.  Wherever they have petrified, they have done it together.  I imagine a gymnasium somewhere; people shut in holding off the threat outside, waiting for help that never comes.  I then imagine the same scene three years later; a mass of the dead, locked in, trying to get past their own fortifications, eventually the right hand jostles the right board, and success.  They burst forth into their new world like an abscess.  As good an explanation as any.  Works for me I guess.  How will I deal with them now?
         The doors are holding, so I feel somewhat secure for the moment.  I let down the ladder shoulder the AK, and descend to the big room.  Walking, feeling the walls, they all feel sturdy.  No nails are half out of the wood boards, no split beams.  I have done well.
         I undo the side door and peer into the entry room. No unwanted guests.  These doors also hold sturdily.  Back to the supply room, I don’t bother to light a lamp.  I am familiar with the contents of the room and enough bright sunshine hits the big room and creeps in here to light the walls.
         I select a nice .22 long rifle carbine that I found in a neighbor’s house some years ago; wood stock, blue steel.  I don’t carry it for protection.  It has no knock down power and holds only ten rounds, but it is perfect for what I have in mind.
         Most discount the .22 as a wimpy round.  True, it won’t blow someone in half or shoot through a lock, but it kills in its own gruesome way.  The .22 is a rather light and small round not much larger than the ammo from a pellet gun. It is fast, though, and will punch through a skull.  Once the round enters a skull, it isn’t powerful enough to punch through the other side.  Rather it ricochets and rattles around scrambling the brain.  The .22 is an assassin’s round.  Look it up.
         I grab a 550-round value cube of ammo and make my way to the back of my workshop.  Propping the rifle on the tub while I open the window and shutters, I look down.
         There they are, a creepy