John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Need a Break

My story begins in Baltimore, the only home I had ever known. I had just graduated college… over a year ago, with a degree in history, and was still living at home with my parents, no combat experience, unless airsoft counts, only a part time museum job, no prospects for the future, pretty typical of my generation I think.

When the outbreak hit I was actually excited, I didn’t have to become an adult, I could just play real life Left 4 Dead! I had a plan; I actually thought I was prepared for this. That didn’t last long.

Anyway the government had finally admitted that the increasing amount of strange “incidents” was caused by the living dead. That’s all I needed to hear! I jumped into action, tucked my Colt .45 into my waistband under my jacket, left my family, who were packing things into the car, headed out the door, and started walking towards the city. That was not my smartest plan.

I lived in Dundalk, a suburb of Baltimore, about 7 miles from the city’s center, but only 1 mile from the sea. My grand plan, which I had thought out for years, ever since I was elected an officer in my school’s Humans vs. Zombies club, was to head towards the city, to where the Navy kept some of its supply ships docked. They were a part of Military Sealift Command. I figured I could convince them to let me bring my family aboard, and then we would be safe and protected by the government.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one to think of that plan. The plague was already spreading through the city and thousands of people were swarming towards the waterfront to try and find passage on a ship.

I thought for sure the big military cargo ships would have room for us; but they had already pulled out, along with any civilian vessel that could get underway. So all I could do was watch the parade of various sized watercraft sail towards the Atlantic.

Now the entire waterfront area was crowded with panicking people, some probably already infected, many soon to be infected, and me. I heard screaming, people were running and pushing. The undead were starting to reach the edge of the group. No one knew where they were going, they just went. I turned to run for home, under normal conditions I could make that run in five minutes tops, but now I was stuck in the middle of a crowd.

I shouldered my way out, drew my gun. The infected were getting close. I took aim and squeezed the trigger, nothing. I examined the gun in my hand which a moment before had given me a sense of security. Then I noticed I had not chambered a round yet. I grabbed the slide and gave it a tug, it did not budge. It had been a while since I cleaned my gun; it just sat in a drawer in my room.

People were running past me now, someone in front of me got tackled. A pair of real live zombies jumped on top of him and he was missing flesh before the three bodies hit the ground. I was in shock. That’s when I was hit; someone ran right into me and knocked me down. I finally yanked back on the slide and got it to chamber a round. Then the sun was blocked out. I looked up and there was a zombie standing over me, getting ready to attack.

I fired into its chest. He dropped, but started coming at me on the ground. I aimed again, but the slide had locked back, jammed. I started crawling backwards, tugging on the slide; finally it released, chambering another round. I fired it into the creature’s face and his head slumped forward at my feet. I got up, zombies were all around.

I don’t know how I made it out, but that was the first time I ever ran a 4 minute mile. I learned a few lessons from that encounter too, never go anywhere alone, clean your weapons and keep a round in the pipe, and of course, don’t run into a panicking crowd in a city when zombies are attacking. I won’t be making those mistakes again.

By the time I got back home the family was already packed up and had a rough plan. I grabbed my pre-packed bug out bag and went along for the ride because I was still upset my plan had fallen apart.

The bulk of my extended family lives in the suburbs of Baltimore. They managed to coordinate something of a family wide evacuation plan before we lost internet and phones. The entire family loaded everything they could into cars and converged on a Pizza Hut buffet on the other side of the Mason Dixon Line. I didn’t even know those existed, wish it had been open.

From there we began to caravan north to the old family farm in rural central Pennsylvania. It was the least populated place anyone in the family owned, and we could hold up there until things calmed down.

It would be a tight fit for the two dozen or so of us, and none of us were used to the primitive living conditions, but we only needed to leave Baltimore for a few days until the government moved back in so it would be okay…

This was all during the first wave of refugees, no one knew where to go, and the government had not provided any information other than stay in your homes and wait to be rescued. People fled in all directions. It’s true, the roads were pretty bad, but not as bad as they would become, not a standstill yet. If anyone blocked the road they were moved out of the way and so the lanes were kept open.

The trip should have been 4 hours at most, but this time it took us 2 days. Otherwise it was relatively uneventful. There were even some restaurants that were still open at this point. They were crowded, but it was worth it for hot food. We beat the infection to Altoona, Pennsyltucky, the closest population center to the farm, and even managed to buy some stuff at the Super Wal Mart back before it was closed and looted.

From there we went to the farm. It started small, just family; we stuck to our own property and didn’t try to interact much. That lasted maybe two weeks, by then we were going crazy from being cooped up together. That’s when we heard the plague was spreading, not being contained, that the government didn’t even maintain any forces in our area. That’s when we realized things weren’t going back to the way they were. The end of the world did not come quickly.

We argued for a couple of days, but eventually we decided we could not survive on our own. We started trying to make contact with anyone left nearby. In the process we cleared out a lot of zombies, we were lucky, they were spread out and weren’t numerous. We were still amateurs. We looted the places that were empty and met new people along the way. We loved being out of the house. It was dangerous and hard work, but we loved it, and I dare say we were doing a good job of it.

The people of my generation bore the brunt of this work. Our parents, the baby boomers were too old; after a while they finally started to step aside and let us have a go at it, all it took was the apocalypse to get our fair chance.

We fortified as best we could, we tried to become self sufficient, and succeeded in a few areas.

As we found more survivors we started to build a small community, and everyone did their part. We lost some, and it felt like we were scratching our existence out of the rocky soil, (seriously, who farms on the side of a rocky mountain?) but we must have been doing pretty well because eventually the army sent us some Special Forces guys to help out.

We must have been fairly successful as far as communities go to warrant government attention again. There were not a whole lot of Special Forces guys willing to jump back in and get cut off to help a group of people develop and stay safe until the military could make its way all the way back east.

The Green Berets trained us to better defend ourselves, they helped us build better infrastructure, dig wells, that sort of thing. The best part was they were able to call in airdrops, it wasn’t like ordering stuff off of Amazon, we couldn’t get anything we wanted, but if there was something that would help us become more self sufficient, a new water pump, ammunition, seeds, the SF guys would get it dropped in for us.