The Bolachek Journals - Part 1 Read online

louder than yesterday.

  Yesterday. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, I had just gotten home. Letting myself into my parent's apartment building, I heard some of their neighbors milling about. A few of them were groaning, perhaps sick with the same flu that had taken my parents. Down the hall, someone was having a hellish fight. I hurried into my parent's apartment, locking the apartment door behind me. Slumping onto the sofa, I dropped the bags of groceries onto the floor at my feet and turned the TV on. Static. I surfed through a few other channels and found several running public service announcements or emergency messages regarding the epidemic. All of the advice seem pointless or stunningly obvious. Stay inside; drink plenty of fluids; avoid contact with sick people. I gave up and put in a DVD of some crime drama my parents liked. I half watched. I wondered how long it would take before the epidemic ran its course and things started returning to normal. I wondered what I should do about my parents. I wondered if I should do anything about the next door neighbors moaning and pounding on the wall.

  I turned off the TV. The moaning and pounding seemed louder now. Then I realized, the sounds were not coming from next door... they were coming from my parent's bedroom.

  April 19 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  They were dead. I know they were dead. I had gone into their room that morning prepared for the worst. But the worst is so much worse than we imagined. Of course you know what I found when I opened that door a second time. If you are alive to read this, you probably experienced something like it, or at least talked to someone who has. The gray skin, the glassy yellow-white eyes, and that howl they make when they see the living. My parents had only just reanimated, and that probably saved my life. Their movements were still clumsy. It evidently takes a while for the change to finish, for all the muscles to start working again. Miguel described it to us. He worked as an RN at the clinic over on Westerfield Avenue. Before he left, the hospital was swamped with patients. They had people stretched out in the waiting room and in hallways. Some were dying and reanimating before anyone could even examine them. It started out as just a twitching, then grew to something more like convulsions. Eventually, the corpses started dragging themselves along the floor, and then pulled themselves up and started shambling about. They never seemed to gain back all of their former speed or coordination, but they were still damn dangerous. Miguel says nobody realized what was happening at first. A lot of people got bit trying to restrain and treat the already deceased. That was always fatal. Once bit, you have a few hours at best. A bite seems to bi-pass all those weeks of flu-like symptoms and sends you right to the end stage... yellow eyed catatonics.

  After seeing my parents like that, reduced to slavering flesh hungry monsters, I completely lost it. Now I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind before that, but something really snapped at that point. I grabbed my duffel bag with my textbooks, snatched my non-working cell phone from the coffee table, and headed for the door.

  "I'm going back to school!", I shouted to my parents as I slammed the door on them. "I've had enough of this crap, and I'm going back to MIT." I ran down the hall, past the sounds of moaning and crying coming from various doors. I bolted outside, nearly running into a manic, pale faced, yellow eyed figure. The creature gave a bellow and lurched at me, but I ran past and headed flat-out for the bus station. I had spent most of my cash at the at the convenience store. I hoped I had enough limit left on my credit card to purchase a ticket back to Boston.

  Yeah, I really wasn't thinking very straight.

  I saw a few other people on the way to the bus station. Some were running like me. Others shambled and lurched. I didn't slow to talk to any of them. I didn't stop until I got to the bus station. It was locked up of course. The CDC had closed down all the trains and bus stations and airports early on in the epidemic. My brain slowly started functioning again. I looked around. Several pale figures were lurching toward me from different directions. I ran around the corner of the bus station and began to head down the alley that ran between it and the retail store next door. More shapes stumbled toward me from the other end of the alley.

  "God damn it!" I shouted. I looked toward the retail store and wondered if I could kick in its side door and escape that way. I was just about to try, when a hand grabbed my arm and drag me toward the bus station.

  I screamed and tried to pull away, until a female voice exclaimed, "Quit fighting me and get your ass in here!" Someone had opened a side door to the station, one I had nearly ran past without noticing. I bolted inside, and we both slammed the door shut. I noticed a large red warning label on the door: Alarm Will Sound. No alarm was going off.

  "Don't worry", my rescuer assured, "They can't open it from the outside, it's a fire exit." I finally got a good look at my hero, a young brunet woman in sweat pants and a UMKC jersey. "I'm Kalee, by the way."

  "I know," I answered, "we went to high school together."

  April 21 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  I've been camped out at the bus station for about four days now, me and more than a hundred other people. Most found their way here before me, like me hoping to find a way out of town. Others trickled in a bit at a time as word got out somehow that a group was making a stand here. That trickle has slowed and finally stopped as the number of undead outside grew. Early on, a few brave people had managed to sneak out and back in, picking a door with the fewest monsters near it and then just running faster than their shambling pace could match. That isn't possible any more. The walking dead seem to have figured out we are in here, and their numbers have grown until now there is a ring of them all the way around the building at least three bodies deep. The constant moaning and howling of the creatures is wearing on everyone. I don't think any of us are sleeping.

  Supplies are low. I think back to the groceries I had purchased a few days ago and wish I had brought them instead of my textbooks. Very few people brought much in the way of food. Some did, and they were reluctant to share initially, but the hungry far outnumbered the well supplied, and peer pressure or perhaps basic human decency won out over selfishness. By unspoken agreement, we are a temporary commune now. At least we aren't low on water yet. Before the water utility packed up, someone thought to fill every available container, including a few large, cleaned-out garbage cans. We also seem to have sufficient guns and ammo. In Oklahoma, folks value their second amendment rights.

  Originally, the plan was to simply hold out until the national guard or army or some such came to the rescue. As our food dwindles and the undead horde grows, that plan seems less viable. Someone in the group has a multi-band radio, basically a hand-held CB, and the news coming in from that is grim. The same virus that has hammered the civilian population has depleted the military. There just isn't enough healthy, live people out there to hold things together.

  Max called a meeting earlier. I wouldn't call him our leader, I'm not sure we have one, but people seem willing to to listen to Max. He just has that sort of personality that commands a person's attention. He can talk in a calm, quiet voice, and yet it fills the room. He isn't any taller than average, not particularly striking in appearance, yet he seems bigger than life sometimes. Maybe it's the way he looks people in the eye when he talks. I swear he can talk to an entire room full of people, and every one of them will feel like he is talking to just them individually. He could have cut a swath as a politician, but someone told me he services air conditioners or something along those lines.

  "Nobody is coming for us." Max laid it out without sugar coating. "We need to get ourselves out of this." A worried murmur began to rise, and Max charged ahead before it took over the meeting. "We've got a plan. Jack and I have been looking over the buses, the ones inside the repair bay. We think we can get two of them running, and top them off with diesel siphoned from the others. That should be enough to get us all out of here, though we'll be packed in pretty tight."

  This caused some excited discussion
among the group. Not everyone wanted to try it, but the momentum was definitely in favor. Then someone yelled the question, "What about the people in quarantine?"

  Things got quiet rather quick. Not everyone at the bus depot is in perfect health. Anyone with flu-like symptoms is quarantined in the luggage handling area. The people with the mildest symptoms look after those worse off. There have been a few deaths in the few days we've been here. Nobody talks about what was done with the bodies.

  Nobody liked the idea of sharing a bus with the sick. It isn't like we can just put them in their own bus; there are too many healthy people and two few buses. The discussion became heated. Some people want to leave them behind. Others insisted we can leave nobody behind no matter the risk. The arguments became circular and steadily louder, until Max insisted we table the topic for now. We could think about solutions while working on the buses, he said.

  Kalee is completely in the 'leave nobody behind' camp, as am I. At this point, I think most of us would have already gotten sick if we were going to. I just can't imagine leaving anyone to that hellish horde out there.

  Kalee. She's a force of nature. I think it was her idea to fill water containers before the utilities shut down. The water pressure held out longer than electrical service, but they both died within a few days of each other. She warned about both possibilities and got people thinking and preparing for it. She's also been a wizard at figuring out ways to stretch our food supplies. It seems she can take the most incongruous combinations of things and figure out some way to combine them in water and make a soup that will feed hundreds. I expect her to start producing loaves and fishes out of thin air at any moment.

  I never really knew her in high school. She moved in the goth crowd. She always seemed a bit cold, aloof, maybe a bit pretentious and superior even. Boy did I get that wrong. Trapped in a bus depot surrounded by the undead, we finally found ourselves able to talk to each other.

  "My god I was always terrified in high school." She admitted to me, "I always felt like everyone else had it so much more together. I was convinced if I opened my mouth for more than a couple of words, I would make a total ass of myself."

  I laughed. "I think you had the better approach though." was my answer, "I was constantly saying too much and actually making an ass of myself."

  She laughed at that, and I realized I'd never seen her laugh or smile back in school. It looked good on her. She looks better all around. More confident. More alive. It seems funny when I think about it now, writing it down, but I think she feels more comfortable trapped in a building surrounded by zombies than she felt in a high school bounded by the expectations of our peers.

  April 23 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  As soon as Jack found out I was an MIT engineering student, he recruited me into helping with the bus repairs. He seems to hold MIT in an almost religious reverence, like some people treat the Vatican. He never finished college himself; dropped out of Kansas State back in the late 80's to take care of the family farm when his father fell ill. The guy is a natural engineer though. He spilled his entire life story while we tinkered away on those giant diesel engines, telling me about creative bodges he had wired together to keep farm equipment running and the crazy inventions he hopes to work on some day. He diagnosed those bus engines using instinct and sense of smell I think. I was mostly just there to hand him tools. We got two of the four buses started and running without much effort. We robbed spare parts and fuel from the other two, with each working bus ending up with a little more than half a tank each.

  We also hit upon a solution to the quarantine problem while working. These buses are cross country passenger vehicles, the kind that include a large luggage compartment below the seating area. The luggage compartment is accessible only from the outside of the bus, so we can in theory make an effective quarantine area out of it. It might require drilling some ventilation holes through the side panels, and we should find some cushions or padding to make their ride more comfortable, but it should accommodate everyone currently quarantined in the luggage handling area of the depot. I guess that's kind of ironic now that I think about it... from one luggage area to another.

  I talked to another old school mate today. Milo was a year ahead of me in high school. He was on the football team, dated cheerleaders, was even voted homecoming king I think... another one of those people moving in completely different circles than me. Turns out he got to the depot before me but then volunteered to go out and find supplies and other survivors. He returned and then went back out two more times. To get back in the last time, he had to gun down a crowd of zombies and then climb up the side of the building so someone could let him in a second floor window. I swear, the guy is Rambo crossed with Spiderman. Kalee mentioned he was around, but he's spent a lot of time on the roof since he got back, observing the undead, watching for military aircraft, or taking a shift on the radio, so I hadn't seen him much before this. I was chatting with Kalee when he stopped over to say hi to her. He actually remembered me from high school, but he looked a bit uncomfortable with me being around. Turns out he was classmates with Kalee at UMKC, so I suspect I'm treading on some history here. I'm not sure if they've dated or if Milo has just been working toward that goal. Either way, I'm now feeling totally third wheelish.

  I left Kalee and Milo to reminisce about their college days and distracted myself for a while checking the barricades again, then I parked myself in a quiet corner and powered up my phone. Flipping through the digital pictures of my college friends back in Boston, I wondered how many of them had survived the disaster. Are any of them holed up in a zombie besieged building like this right now? If so, what will be their fate? Hell, what will happen to us? As these questions drifted through my head, my phone flashed a battery warning and went dead.

  Talk about fucking ominous.

  April 25 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  It's been a couple of days since my last journal entry, and a lot has happened since. The decision was made to leave the depot in the morning. We loaded in what supplies we had left, got all the healthy people on board, opened up the luggage storage, and then gave the word to the quarantine. They filed in slowly, some of them having to carry or drag others. There was no more than a dozen of them left at this point, and by the looks of them there would be fewer soon. I learned later that two of them had actually fully recovered but elected to stay in quarantine to look after the rest.

  I remember an incident my second day at the depot. A woman had developed a cough and was told she had to go to quarantine. She refused, swore up and down it was a simple cold. Several armed people made it clear she had no choice. She might have had the deadly cough, or it might have been just a cold like she said. We might be sending her needlessly to likely infection and death. I don't know, but I looked for her in that grim procession, praying I would see her face. I didn't.

  Jack was in the lead bus with Max. Kalee and I were together on the second bus; Max made a point of placing Jack and I on different buses. I think he wanted to make sure we had at least one engine mechanic in the event one of the buses didn't make it. Milo was up on the roof of our bus along with five other gunmen. The other bus had its own six gunners. We had drilled holes in the roof that they threaded safety lines through, securing themselves in place. Drilling those holes had not been easy with the power out. We had a cordless drill, and I managed to keep it charged for a time using the batteries from the other buses, but when that finally died, Jack had to fashion hand drills using drill bits, pipe fittings, and a few random odds and ends. We got the job done though.

  Opening the garage door without power presented an even bigger challenge. I'm proud of the solution Jack and I came up with. We could hear the undead milling about just outside, and as they heard us working on the buses, they began pressing against and pounding on that garage door. Manually lifting the door would have been a death sentence for whoever tried it, so we rigged up a system
of counterweights to do the job. We disconnected the chain from the electric garage door opener, then ran cables from the door, over pulleys hung from the ceiling, to barrels filled with tools and engine parts. We very carefully rigged the barrels so they would remain hanging from the ceiling supports until set free with the yank of a trigger cable. I held my breath when it finally came time to try it. I was so worried about whether it would work correctly or not, I briefly forgot about what was waiting for us on the other side of that door.

  God almighty, how do I describe it. We first started both buses, then one of the gunners yanked on the trigger cable. Our contraption worked perfectly. The garage door snapped open as the barrels crashed to the ground. A wave of howling death charged into the garage like the gates of hell itself had opened up.

  And kept coming. And coming. The numbers outside had been steadily growing, and the noise of our departure had been attracting them to this side of the building. The lead bus moved forward and met the wave of zombies. Our bus followed right after. At first we gained speed, shoving the undead ahead of us, but then the lead bus slowed. It was losing traction as bodies were crushed under its wheels. Our driver slowed to avoid hitting it. Monster swarmed around us, pounding and clawing. The metal panels rang like gongs. Windows cracked. The first bus gunned its engine, spinning its tires. Bits of shredded zombie flesh sprayed up and splattered on our bus's windshield. We inched forward. The gunners fired repeatedly, trying to open a path. The lead bus was out of the garage. Then ours. We were completely surrounded now but still moving. Then the first bus was free. It rocketed forward as its tires finally bit clean pavement. We shot right after it. Bus one clipped a parked car as the driver cranked the wheel around, steering out of the depot parking lot and into the street. It belched a cloud of diesel fumes as we shifted up a gear and headed out of town.

  It was comparatively smooth sailing for a while after that. We encountered plenty of zombies, but individually or in small groups they simply were no match for us. I saw a few other buildings with large swarms of the undead around them and wondered how the survivors within were holding out. There was nothing we could do for them, so we just drove