October 15, 2019

I've created a plan for scavenging.

The three most important things during this scavenging mission are: disinfect, disinfect, and disinfect. I do not plan on dying tomorrow, especially of something so trivial as not disinfecting something properly and getting the infection because who knows how long the infection sticks to surfaces.

Anyways, I've created a plan. There is a group of markets and stores nearby, about half a mile away. There is a small convenience and grocery store there along with a mini-pharmacy (that lacks all the strong stuff, if you know what I mean) and some small cafes that managed to stay open even though I swear no one visited them. Anyways, those stores cover all that I currently need: food and possibly water, medicine, and batteries.

For the disinfecting part, I'll be using a spray can filled with bleach and rags to disinfect any of the cans and medicine bottles that I find (but not the batteries for fairly obvious reasons, one being that the battery will probably explode and take my hand out) before putting them in a bag. For the batteries, I'm thinking a light spritz on a rag and some gentle rubbing on the packaging for the batteries will be safe enough since the batteries themselves are not being exposed to the bleach. This part is very fishy, but it's better to lose my hand than get eaten by a zombie.

When I get back, I'll dump my rubber gloves in a shallow basin of bleach, put on new rubber gloves, bleach my boots, take them off, celebrate a little because I won't be dead (until I wake up with the infection a day later), get my rubber gloves and boots and dump them in the backyard to dry off and let the bleach fumes fly away, like invisible, toxic butterflies.

Afterwards, I'd dump my clothes into a bin and wash them (I have no idea what to do, but I assume It's like washing dishes) and then place the cans and medicine into the pantry for storage, and then say a little prayer for good health because it's always good to be safe instead of sorry.

Tomorrow is going to be crazy. I hope I'm not like one of those characters on TV that does something stupid for absolutely no reason.

October 16, 2019

I'm alive! Now, let's rewind to the beginning.

I headed out in the mid-morning / beginning of the afternoon. The weather was cooling down a bit, but it was still pretty warm (I'm talking about 70 to 75 degrees), and my hands were literally sweating in the rubber gloves. I wanted to strip the gloves off, but the thoughts of death just filling my mind (I don't know if I should thank or rip out the lizard-part of my brain) stopped me.

There were no zombies roaming the streets, which was unusual. I remembered that the infected patients had some light sensitivity, but I wasn't sure whether that transferred to the zombies or not. The leaves on the sycamore trees were bright orange and red, rustling and falling with the wind as I walked towards the stores. I walked on the sidewalk under the trees because walking in the middle of the open road just exposed yourself to too many people that may or may not be watching from their windows (That just makes them sound like, what was the phrase? Peeping Toms, I believe).

Anyways, I got to the cluster of stores in about 10-15 minutes. It looked pretty normal if you ignored the smashed glass windows (shattered like all my hopes and dreams), the abandoned cars that were covered in autumn leaves, and the shadows that seemed to move in the store, which may or may not have been the infected.

Oh, yeah! I forgot to mention this, but I didn't really bring any weapons. See, a knife or a bat or any melee weapon, really, would be pretty useless since you'd hit the zombie, the blood would splatter all over you, and voila, you're now a soon-to-be-dead zombie (unless you blow out your own brain, of course. Or your heart. Or your lungs, but let's be honest, no one really knows where your heart or lungs are really located).

Instead, I brought some stones as weapons because I've got a decent throwing arm (thank you baseball in elementary school). I'll be able to stay far enough from zombies to not get splattered by blood when they get hit by a stone.

Anyways, the first place that I went to was the grocery store. The floor was scattered with rotting vegetables and fruit, and it was pretty disgusting to say the least. It was also really dark inside the store, even with the windows being broken. I had to use my flashlight (which I almost didn't bring because I thought I was over preparing, but better safe than sorry wins again).

I gingerly stepped over the rotting lettuce leaves and maggot ridden eggplants in the front of the store to reach the back of the store, where all the canned food was. There was this squelch under my boot as I stepped into a redd-ish puddle. I had no idea what it was, though I had a couple of guesses flashed through my mind. Tomato Juice? Cow Blood? Zombie Blood? Maybe it was best not to think about it.

At the back, I found only a couple of cans of food, featuring delicious meals such as barf brussel sprouts, gassy beans, and the very plain and bland string beans. I put my flashlight in my pocket, sprayed the cans with bleach, wiped them down with a rag, and dropped them into my bag. Spray. Wipe. Drop. I did that with the sixteen cans that I could find that were in good condition. There were some that were dented and others that were leaking out fluid all over the floor, and there was no way that I was going to eat anything from those cans.

I was about to exit the store when something caught my eye. There were some potatoes, onions, and garlic that were laying on the ground, sprouting because they were partially exposed to the sun. I wanted to grab the vegetables, but there was no way to disinfect them without killing them, so I was in a bind.

But then, I had an epiphany. I grabbed one of those plastic bags that are one paper towel roll device, bleached the outside only , grabbed as many garlic, onions, and potatoes as I could fir in the bag, and tied it up. Then, I grabbed a new bag, bleached the inside and outside of it, and dumped the bag with the vegetables into the new bag and tied it all together, essentially double-bagging the vegetables, and dumped it into my bag.

The problem was when I went to the second store, the pharmacy. At that point, my backpack was filled with a little more than a dozen cans and a bag of onions and potatoes and was awfully heavy, so you could say that I didn't have the greatest agility. Looking back on it now, I probably should've tapped the front of the store with a stone or something to draw the zombie out, but oh well, I learned my lesson.

So as you could probably guess, I entered the store, and boom, there was a zombie smack dab in the middle of the dark pharmacy. It was chewing on something bloody and dark red (hopefully a squirrel or something), and it turned to face towards me. I was going to vomit, but there's really not time to vomit when there's a zombie that's literally chasing you. It's safe to say that I've never ran this fast in my life. Thank goodness that I'm not like my fellows nerds and can actually run decently (6 minute mile time in high school).

I got home in about four minutes, which was pretty impressive considering that I was carrying a five to ten pound weight on my back. I'm surprised that none of the cans got dented (though that does bring up the question about what happened to the dented cans in the store. People would've had to throw them against the ground to dent them, and I have zero clue why people would do that. But then again, I have zero clue about how other people's minds operate, so yeah).

The plan that I laid out yesterday worked nice and smoothly for the cans. As for the bag of potatoes, onions, and garlic, I'm planning to sun-disinfect them by laying them out in the sun for three days to get all the ANCR that may or may not be sticking to them off. It's pretty much the only thing that I can do because bleaching potatoes seems awfully fishy.

As for the rest of today, I thought that I'd reward myself for a job well done. I ate the last chocolate bar, a kit-kat (a.k.a. The best chocolate candy). Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

October 17, 2019,

I jinxed everything.

I've run out of water, and I've run out of natural gas. Double whammy. The world better be sending me some presents to make up for all this bad luck.

Well, I guess it did send me something good. Or more precisely, let me keep something good (a.k.a. my life). The zombie from yesterday also didn't follow me back home, but these two positives most definitely donut (sorry, I'm just hungry right now) cancel out the negatives.

All that happened today was just more gardening. I transplanted more pea plants from the inside of the house to the outside. Some of the peas began to flower, so it's pretty important for them to be outside for, you know, "the birds and the bess" pollination thing. Actually, come to think of it, do these flowers even need bees to produce peas. I swear that some plants can pollinate themselves, but as I say, better safe than sorry.

The potatoes, onions, and garlic are still sitting in the sunlight, the virus on the skins probably getting UV-rayed. I've shook them around a little to make sure that all of the skin gets exposed to sunlight, so that all the viruses die (what is possibly a very slow and painful death).

Now without access to running water or gas, I have an admittedly massive problem. There's a small creek nearby, about a quarter of a mile away, so water is not a problem. Getting clean water is the big problem. No natural gas means that boiling water is much, much harder. I'd have to build some sort of campfire and a system for holding pots over this fire, and my building skills are a thousand times worse than my gardening skills, so that's definitely not happening.

The only other thing that I could do would be to use my bleach to disinfect the water. I think I printed out a page about disinfecting water with bleach (I vaguely remember 7-10 drops of bleach per gallon of water), but it's better to check than die of bleach poisoning, slowly and painfully if I might add. I think you can also use the UV rays to treat the water, but that's super fishy and there's a solid chance that I'll get E. Coli or whatever nasty bacteria are lurking in the murky waters.

Now... the other problem I'm going to have without access to running water: the toilet problem. Even with the sewage plants probably being down, the toilets still worked when we had water, so I assume they'll work when we don't have water. I'll probably have to manually put water into the toilet, but other than that, I expect it to work fine for now (How much money that the toilet is going to clog tomorrow and leave a big mess?)

The world is literally screwing me over.