Day 218 - A Day in the Life, Part One

Sorry I ran off so abruptly yesterday, but duty calls at the worst of times. Here's a run down of what happened:

I grabbed my rifle out of the rack I built for it and ran to the back stairs, heading for the roof. Ian was at the back door undoing the bolts as I got there, and we both ran up to the roof to see what was happening.

I should probably explain a little bit about our set-up here. We live in a second floor apartment in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, and when things went to shit, we decided it was best to hole up here instead of joining the panicking masses making a run for it. The first floor is pretty indefensible with the giant glass front door. We opted to take out the front stairs down to the first floor instead. We've managed to secure the back doors to the downstairs apartments (thank God they have steel frames). We've also secured the basement so we could have a workshop and a way to get out of the building. The only doors to the basement are metal security doors, and lead to the parking lot out back.

Two sides of the parking lot have 5 foot concrete walls and another 6 feet of fencing on top of that. The third side is bounded by our buildings. To close off what used to be the driveway, we scavenged some sturdy gates to fasten at the bottom of the hill. They're designed to move so we can get vehicles in and out, but are sturdy enough to keep out the zeds long enough for us to pick them off. We've also cleared and secured all the buildings on the block to make sure nothing can get in to the lot that way. A little perimeter alarm around the whole deal has saved our ass a few times, though we fight hard not to let ourselves rely on it too much.

Our base of operations is on the second and third floors of our original building, as we're trying to keep our footprint small. We have room to grow, but not the supplies or means yet. Hopefully some day soon we'll be able to take in more survivors and more effectively try to reclaim our city. Hopefully some survivors will stay alive until they can make it to us, unlike most of the folk that come this way.

For now, though, it's just 5 of us. Myself and Ian who were living here, have taken over leadership and planning, as we both seem to excel at it. We're also blessed with our friend Alec and Ian's girlfriend Crista, who happened to be over when hell came to us, and our friend Brian, who we found fighting for his life on one of our supply runs.

Anyway, it occurs to me I was trying to tell a story. Ian and I scrambled up to the roof to get a look at what was going on. We searched the streets frantically for the woman, and Ian eventually spotted her not far off to the west. Unfortunately that's the worst way to approach here. There are tons of alleys for zeds to pop out of, and there's some light tree cover between us and where the poor woman was, which makes for somewhat crappy sniping.

The woman seemed far too healthy to be a nomad, so she must have come from some survivor cell somewhere. There's no telling what she was doing so far out our way. There's no other cell for at least a mile, as we've expanded our scavenging radius about that far and not seen a living soul. Maybe she was running reconnaissance, or scavenging at a foolhardy distance form her home. At the moment though, she was trying to protect herself from five, fresh looking zeds. Her weapon of choice: a rusty machete. I loaded my rifle and tried to get a line of shot, as Ian, being our strategical mastermind in battle, clicked on his radio and called down to the others, telling them to gear up and start heading out the back and over to the woman.

I caught the first Zed, the one closest to her, in the right temple. It crumpled, and so did she. Rookie mistake, and one that should never be made around zeds. With gunfire, always keep running. These days, it's better to die. As we've seen again and again, there's nothing worse than dying at the hands of a zed.

Ian finished up radioing instructions, and grabbed his rifle. I snagged another zed in the eye, just as Ian effectively lobotomized a third. They both slumped, and again, so did she. Once from fright is one thing, but this woman seemed to have a death wish. I signaled to Ian to stop firing, and told him she had done the same thing after the first shot. We'd dropped the zeds from five to two. Hopefully she could stay alive long enough for us to get to her.

Time for my turn on the bike-turned-generator. Back with the rest later.

- B