Post by edwin on Jul 2, 2012 11:27:21 GMT
OK, my kind of Zombies:
just a snatch to test the water
Goons (remember the Popeye cartoons? )
It started with a headache and of course a rash. Clever doctors identified it as a very infectious form of meningitis and the world caught it. Recovery was very good in numbers if not in wits. Some that had got it, most that had got it really, suffered some loss of mental capacity which got progressively worse meaning that casualties amongst the uninfected increased through suicide and depression and sheer exhaustion trying to care for everone and succeeding in caring for none..
Public services suffered and everything became worse as the panic-struck irrational suffering Goons, as they came to be called, demanded and demanded and cried and howled and some turned nasty.
"Are you looking at me" became a death sentence for the innocent as it very often became not so much a challenge but an opening move in a vicious uninhibited attack.
For me being healthy seemed a curse as I gave up cleaning up the mess my relatives lived in. First it had been the washing up then puddles of faeces and urine and vomit as they choked on raw food gobbled down in a mad urge to eat. I think it was conversation I missed most but it was being attacked with anything at hand when I came home from a foraging expedition that finally decided me that it was all hopeless.
Not being yet a complete bastard I did kill them all before I left and decently torched the house over them.
Leaving Anytown was like swimming through flesh. Not dead and rotting, yet, but that of living people who grabbed your attention and then your arm wordlessly silent or screaming for help. Help they could not articulate but a sorrowing cry from their depths for something, anything to end their pain of loss.
Knowing that towns were not nice nor villages any better I thought that camping out might be a way of riding the storm until it settled down or the Goons were dead. Lugging 25 kilos of fashionable tentage, sleeping and cooking gear did not appeal but a bivvy bag, fleece liner. hobo stove with billy can and some extra fleece clothes would do without being a straw for the camel's back.
Food would be tins containing their own uncontaminated water until fresh sources could be found. They could all be eaten cold if lighting the hobo stove or a larger fire was impossible or dangerous. Only about a week's supply but resupply in the short time should not be difficult.
A bump cap looking like a stiff peaked cap and a stab vest I took off a parmedic with his head stoved in seemed sensible defences in the present circumstances, the blood rinsed off easily. I sometimes wonder if I had caught a mild form of the meningitis because some reactions of distaste and even compassion were gone or maybe buried under the weight of the sick and the dead.
The catapult and lead balls in my pocket might prove more useful or maybe the long sharp pointed knife in my belt would but for the first instant a ballpeen hammer would prove a fine persuader.
Until I was tooled up with a long gun and pistol or shotgun I was vulnerable but then I always would be to a better shot or even someone that had one more bullet than I did.
Even where I slept out of the town in a dry ditch I could hear the throbbing noise of the increasingly helpless in their desperate search for what they could no longer know.
just a snatch to test the water
Goons (remember the Popeye cartoons? )
It started with a headache and of course a rash. Clever doctors identified it as a very infectious form of meningitis and the world caught it. Recovery was very good in numbers if not in wits. Some that had got it, most that had got it really, suffered some loss of mental capacity which got progressively worse meaning that casualties amongst the uninfected increased through suicide and depression and sheer exhaustion trying to care for everone and succeeding in caring for none..
Public services suffered and everything became worse as the panic-struck irrational suffering Goons, as they came to be called, demanded and demanded and cried and howled and some turned nasty.
"Are you looking at me" became a death sentence for the innocent as it very often became not so much a challenge but an opening move in a vicious uninhibited attack.
For me being healthy seemed a curse as I gave up cleaning up the mess my relatives lived in. First it had been the washing up then puddles of faeces and urine and vomit as they choked on raw food gobbled down in a mad urge to eat. I think it was conversation I missed most but it was being attacked with anything at hand when I came home from a foraging expedition that finally decided me that it was all hopeless.
Not being yet a complete bastard I did kill them all before I left and decently torched the house over them.
Leaving Anytown was like swimming through flesh. Not dead and rotting, yet, but that of living people who grabbed your attention and then your arm wordlessly silent or screaming for help. Help they could not articulate but a sorrowing cry from their depths for something, anything to end their pain of loss.
Knowing that towns were not nice nor villages any better I thought that camping out might be a way of riding the storm until it settled down or the Goons were dead. Lugging 25 kilos of fashionable tentage, sleeping and cooking gear did not appeal but a bivvy bag, fleece liner. hobo stove with billy can and some extra fleece clothes would do without being a straw for the camel's back.
Food would be tins containing their own uncontaminated water until fresh sources could be found. They could all be eaten cold if lighting the hobo stove or a larger fire was impossible or dangerous. Only about a week's supply but resupply in the short time should not be difficult.
A bump cap looking like a stiff peaked cap and a stab vest I took off a parmedic with his head stoved in seemed sensible defences in the present circumstances, the blood rinsed off easily. I sometimes wonder if I had caught a mild form of the meningitis because some reactions of distaste and even compassion were gone or maybe buried under the weight of the sick and the dead.
The catapult and lead balls in my pocket might prove more useful or maybe the long sharp pointed knife in my belt would but for the first instant a ballpeen hammer would prove a fine persuader.
Until I was tooled up with a long gun and pistol or shotgun I was vulnerable but then I always would be to a better shot or even someone that had one more bullet than I did.
Even where I slept out of the town in a dry ditch I could hear the throbbing noise of the increasingly helpless in their desperate search for what they could no longer know.