Pas

Memoirs of a Geek

By GotchaYouLilDirtbag

Summary: It's the far side of the end of the world and I'm going down. I have to find somewhere to hole up and some good people that'll have me. So far I've found nothing but trouble and I think it's just about too late for me. I don't know what to do. (OCxmain cast, season 3).

Hope you all like this one. It's going to be a multi-chapter story, set in the first half of season 3, with the main characters coming into it in a few chapters time. I am not American so please excuse or correct (whichever strikes your fancy) any words/phrases/terminology that are incorrect.

Chapter 1

I'm going to die.

This is the first line of my memoir. I. Am. Going. To. Die. SHIT. I underline the sentence. I am so fucking angry with myself the pen skids into the paper, ripping a black tear through it and the next two pages. After all the fucking shit that's happened this is it. I am alone, in a barn, stinking, starving, in pain, silent with no one else for company but the stupid ass horse that's killed me.

FUUUUUCCCCCK!

That's underlined too. Twice. I'm going to need a new book to write in if I keep up this underlining-in-anger shit.

OK, ok, ok. Calm. Calm. Get control… Get control. No need to aggravate the walkers clawing and moaning and rattling at the barn door.

I've discovered, now that I know I am going to die, that I don't want to go out without anyone knowing what happened. I don't want to be another anonymous corpse, vanishing into rot, unknown, unremembered… That's probably self-centered, narcissistic or whatever, but it's a gut burning need that I have and why the fuck can't I indulge it now that my number is up on the far side of the end of the world? There's no one else here to give a shit except that fucking horse and right now I wish it nothing but ill anyway for what it did. Maybe that's why I have locked the fucker inside with me dying and all?

So, here goes. I'm going to start with what's just happened and see how it goes from there.

It's the end of winter. The chill is receding: no more sleet or snow, no more ice around. The first pinprick size buds are just starting to show on the trees. I can hear more birdsong in the mornings too. It's funny how I register these things now. Before the end of the world I needed the local DJ to tell me when the first day of spring was and the only birdsong I heard were pigeons that flocked around the building where I lived because someone kept on throwing seed out for them. I barely looked at them back then. I hardly heard them above the traffic and my iPod. Now, birds are my iPod, they are my music and my lifeline to sanity. And I am glad they are returning before I exit. I'd hate to go out in total silence.

OK, back to what happened.

I have been on my own, haunting the back roads of this, wherever it is, dodging trouble wherever it raises its head. The last of the people I was with got killed a few days before I reached this place. It was just plain and simple bad luck really. John and I had been raiding a house and missed the walker hiding under the bed in the children's bedroom. Seems a kid had died under there and the walker had woken up and just stayed put for some reason. Maybe it was remembering the fear the kid felt before he died? In any case, John Hudson (a history teacher from Atlanta that used to go scuba diving in his breaks, and a really good man (it's important to write these things down for someone to read one day)), went to sleep in the damned room and woke up with the kid eating on his arm. Damn… I don't want to think about it but I think I owe it to John to put something about it in this memoir.

John was such a brave bastard. He put the kid down right away, but then tucked him back into his childhood bed. He was plumping the goddamn pillow when I came busting in, axe raised. There was blood running out of a kiddie bite mark on his forearm. Oh shit, I can't describe the feeling seeing that and I really don't want to relive it, so whoever reads this will just have to understand. So anyway, we sat down in the kitchen and I am ashamed to say that whilst he sat there like Rambo, I bawled like a baby. After a time we went to the lounge room where the pale winter sun was brightest and the overgrown garden was visible. He took the couch; I took the arm chair. We talked about family, friends, times passed, and then we broke out the pills, enough to drop an elephant, and he took them with some whisky we found in the liquor cabinet. And that was that. I used his icepick to make sure he stayed down and buried him under the bare thorny rose bushes in the garden. I tried to remember some words that should be said over him, but I couldn't remember any and, in any case, I think God (if there is one) has already decided where we are all going to end up and has already put us there.

Then I left. Left the house, the city, the county. I just drove away into the oncoming winter. I think I just left what was left of my life. I wasn't thinking. I was in mourning for everyone who had died, for John my last good friend, and for myself too. I was alone. I wasn't thinking…

My car ran out of fuel on the edge of a forest a few days later, and I had to abandon it and walk. That had been a damn near fatal thing. A small group of walkers found me pretty quickly and so within about an hour of leaving the car I had lost my supplies, my jacket, my axe and my rifle. It's appalling how fast grieving for another can give way to something much more unfeeling. Within those few minutes I had gone from getting by to going down and all I could do was run. So I did. For miles. Through the forest, across some fields where I was lucky enough to attract more attention and more pursuers, back into more forest and finally, when I could barely go another step, on to a farm. I managed to get myself across the electrified barbwire fence (I actually don't remember how) before I got bit and fell to the ground gasping for cold frigid air. I remember my mouth, nose, throat and chest aching with how damn cold that air was. The walkers behind me, moments behind me, chest slammed the fence and got stuck. Electricity jittered and jerked their rotting carcasses, and the steel barbs pinned them as effectively as fish hooks, so that all they could do was moan, shiver and wave their arms at me. Just as well since I was like a landed fish myself. I think I must have blacked out for a moment because when I registered things again, the walkers were limp along the fence and there was gun smoke in the air. Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck. I felt like crying. I think maybe I was.

"You bit?" I managed to roll my head around to see a worn out old man in worn out coveralls staring at me. Staring hard. There was no amity in that stare, just a question: did he need another bullet?

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yep." I showed him my arms and waggled myself around, too damn exhausted to do much more, but he didn't make a move to force me to do more. Instead, he grunted and chewed on his lip, and scratched the side of his mouth where the dried cold-reddened skin was prickled with white stubble. The finger he used was stained and scarred like worn-out leather; knobbled and set in a crooked line. When he moved it to scratch he had to bend it from the knuckle. In his other hand, grasped hard and stiff like a rabbit in a hawk's claw, he held his rifle with his finger crooked over the trigger. The gun was aimed somewhere at my stomach and my life was in the balance. Again.

I studied him while I waited. I do that now, since the apocalypse. I study people all the time, trying to find faster and faster ways to get at their intentions before things get fatal. This old man was OLD, but old in that sort of way that just makes a person hard rather than frail. He looked like something carved out of leather that had been beaten, left out in the sun, rain and wind, worked and beaten some more and then left out again. I did not fancy my chances if I had to run or fight. Though I reckoned I was at least 40 years younger and had been holding my own out there for months, I was no match for the sheer toughness of the man that stood over me. Clint Eastwood would shit himself.

I waited, until…

He suddenly let the barrel of the gun drop, though the hard implacable stare remained. "You kin take whatever you want. You got my permission fer that. But don't you go near the upstairs bedroom. That ain't fer you. Got that?" I stared, totally baffled. "You ahear-ed me?" He kicked me in the leg.

"Yeah, yeah. Not the bedroom." I said. "What-?"

"There's a hoss in the barn. Name's Lil' Joy, after her mother. She's a good hoss. Good an' strong. Don't be mistreatin' her if you take her and she'll do ah-right by you. If you don't take her, I'd be obliged if you'd put her outa her misery. I don't got the heart for that no more." I nodded dumbly, still thinking what the fuck?, but he didn't seem to register me – not really. It was like he was already gone someplace else. "The rest you ken figure out for yourself." His gaze suddenly slipped away to the big two floor farm house I hadn't noticed. I didn't know what the hell to do, but something told me not to move so I lay there in the mud getting lungfuls of frigid walker-rot tainted air and waited. After a long time he turned back toward me, urgent and fierce. "But you ain't to go in the bedroom. You got that? I got your word on that?" He kicked me again when I didn't answer right away and so I nodded. Shit. He considered me once more for a moment and then just walked away. I sat up and stared. He went into the barn. A moment later that rifle discharged and that was that.

I would like to tell you that I felt anything normal about what happened to that old guy. I would like to tell you how sad or horrified I was that he just walked off and shot himself, but I don't think a person should lie in their memoirs. What I felt was: nothing. I was physically and mentally at my limit, maybe beyond it, so I just got up and went into the house. I found a fire poker in the kitchen and went straight up stairs to the bedroom figuring that he'd left a loved one up there, undead and restless. But when I opened the door I found a little old lady in bed arms crossed over a love worn bible that rested against her chest. Her eyes were shut, and there was a big ol' red stained floral towel over the top of her head and a bandage around her forearm. The air still smelled like gunsmoke. It didn't take too much to figure what had happened, so I shut the door and went down stairs again.

I ate myself stupid in the kitchen. There was so much food! Even a fresh apple pie. I am now very ashamed to say that I ate that without thinking about the hands that made it, nor the life that was lived probably until that very morning, in this house. I just ate, and then I slept in the old cellar with the door barred. It was a deep sucking quicksand sleep and I had no choice but to give in to it. When I woke it was light still, or light again, I don't know which. There was no way to tell. I felt better, which meant that I felt less like shit than yesterday, but my whole body felt frail and hollow and cold so I stayed indoors and ate and explored the house looking for supplies. To cut a long story short: I started again.

When I left my old life, I didn't have the luxury of time like I had now. I had to move so fast back then all I got to take was a family photo still in its frame, whatever paltry things were in my pantry (I was one day short of grocery day of all the luck), and a baseball bat. I had to climb out the bathroom window too, which was a bitch to get through, with the dead banging away on my door. I couldn't even take my bike: I just hopped on down the alley way and started running. Haven't stopped really, but now, I could stroll around and take some time. I didn't though. Old habits die hard and I barely stopped to smell the roses. In no time I had gone through that old house (lovely big old farm house, everything in polished wood and high vaulted empty spaces) and brought everything useful back to the kitchen.

I had a backpack now: an old canvas one. Into it went clothes, food, utensils, their first aid box contents, matches, toiletries, stationary and the fire poker. I found some tarpaulin and fashioned a weather proofing for the backpack. There were no maps mores the shame and the name of what must be the nearest town, which I found on a yellowed small town newspaper, was of no help to me. Then I was done and I went back to eating. I ate a lot. Have to these days: if it's there, eat it. I also took the time to heat water on the old wood stove in the kitchen for a bath in their old unplumbed claw footed bath. A fucking bath! With actual soap. I stayed in there til I was wrinkled and red raw from scrubbing. Man that was the last bath I have had until this very day and it was fucking awesome.

After all that I made a careful circuit of the homestead, trying to stay out of sight of the few walkers that were staggering and wandering around the fence line. No good getting them all excited and attracting their friends. There was a chicken coop full of plump hens (I helped myself to the eggs – goddamn, more food! So happy), but no dogs or other animals which was a bit odd. When I finally got to the barn I found the old man in the back stall minus most of his head. I didn't hang around except to verify that he'd done things right and pry his gun out of his gnarled fingers, before noticing the huge brown horse standing in one of the stalls watching me. Lil' Joy. There wasn't a car or truck, just the horse. Fuck. I went outside and found a tractor which was no use to me. I went back in the barn and stared at the horse. I didn't know how to ride. I didn't know how to put the saddle on. I needed transport though so she was going to have to be it, so I went back inside the main house to try to find something to show me how to get her kitted out. There was a kid's book that had some pictures in it and somehow I managed to get her bridle on without getting bitten. The saddle though – forget it. The one time I tried it slid around under her belly and she went nuts. It took me the better part of the day to get close enough to cut it off her. I left the saddle behind.

No saddle. Maybe that's why what happened, happened? I don't know enough about horses to know. Shit, that's the thing about this world now: ignorance is hard to fix and it's fucking deadly. No Google or YouTube, no one to ask, no one to rely on, no one to help if things go wrong. You got to know stuff, for real. That's why I have my books. I collect them like I have OCD. Maybe I do have OCD, no book to tell me if I do yet? Hahaha. Anyway, I digress. I didn't have one on horses so maybe that's why what happened, happened?

Shit, that's why I HAD my books. Lost them with the car on the edge of the woods. Damn fucking shit.

I stayed at the farm for about 3 days before I noticed a buildup of walkers along the fence line. I guess they had smelled me, us? Anyway, I couldn't deal with them alone so I left the place before they pushed the fence down. Well, I should say we left: that's me and Lil' Joy; and the backpack of gear, the old man's rifle, ammo, another hand axe (I do like them), and the fire poker I found when I first got there. We lit out at sunrise heading for nowhere in particular, though I was still lying to myself at that point that I was going south to warmer climes where there must be more survivors and hopefully a place for me. Truth is I had no idea where I was, or where I should go, or how to get there. My ass and legs were suffering like I had never felt with all the bouncing around on the horse and I was being randomly herded around by the undead, increasingly large groups of them, and dodging more and more desperate and nasty looking living people, and it was becoming harder and harder to lie to myself that I was making any progress at all in getting anyplace else but lost in the same area. It was getting colder too, and getting more difficult to find shelter and food. Lil' Joy lost weight. So did I.

We needed to find other people. We needed a place to hole-up. We needed it quick.

We found nothing.

End Chapter 1.