Tuesday, April 23, 2013

24




Suddenly a blob of brown and white leapt in front of the windshield. Matrix stomped on the brake pedal and jerked the wheel hard to the right but his atrophied reaction time wasn't fast enough to miss from smashing the object head on. All one hundred and fifty pounds of a full grown white tailed deer slammed into drivers side windshield before popping up and over the Nissan's roof. Panicking, Matrix tried to correct the trajectory of the car but in his excitement overcompensated and inadvertently sent the car spinning in circles at sixty miles an hour. Amid a flurry of smoke and tire chirps the Leaf bounded over the soft gravel shoulder and plunked ass backwards into a hilly thicket of grass.

Surprisingly short of a couple of scrapes and bruises everyone in the car escaped the accident unscathed, the car and the deer however did not fare as well. About 400 feet behind the Nissan's final resting place the body of the formerly bounding deer exhaled its final breath. The car while not a total write off, suffered significant damage to the body, but most critically one of the rear wheels had been slapped horizontal and impacted inward.  Even if a member of the team had the tools or the talent to replace a tire, there was no way they could fix the damaged rotor and rear suspension.  

Zigoat stumbled out of the car and limped into the middle of the road. He surveyed the skid marks, blood spots and splintered fender pieces strewn across the concrete. He tuned his gaze further down the highway as far as he could see before turning around and doing the same thing in the other direction. After standing in the street for about five minutes he shouted out loud enough for the others to hear: "What the fuck are the chances of that happening?" "What are the chances of what happening" Betelgeuse responded. Stammering slightly Zigoat approached the group before continuing. "I bet that three cars at the most, AT THE MOST" pass through here every couple of days, and the moment one does, it's the exact same time and place that A FUCKING DEER IS CROSSING THE STREET?" "Oh yeah" Betelgeuse replied, "I guess that is pretty random." "I have a better question" Matrix chimed in. "What the fuck are we going to do now?" 

Thursday, April 18, 2013

23

Chapter 3



At daybreak on a typical not hot, not cold but a little windy central coast morning team CURE piled into the Nissan. Even though it was early they were greeted by a shuffling of curtains and staring eyes peering through tiny slits in several windows of Zigoat's apartment complex. The group turned toward the onlookers and gave them a "Don't worry nothing suspicious is going on here" smile and little wave before silently lurching down the road.

Matrix's uncle had been kind enough to lend him the car for the journey and even though the road was wide open the trip started with a few hiccups. When composing the paranoid list the night before no one considered the fact that neither of them had driven more than 3 miles at a time in the past 5 years, moreover,  none of that driving had been done at highway speeds. The result of this with Matrix at the wheel was several jumped curbs and accidental emergency stops before they reached highway 101. Eventually he got the hang of the controls and the group quickly started knocking off miles between them and the compound.

It didn't take long for everyone to slip into a throwback road trip mode giggling and playing nonsense games. Looking out the window with a 1000 yard stare Katt remarked at how the landscaped had changed. Beach towns that were once overrun with families cluttering the piers and local shops had  been abandoned leaving the sea air and the elements to consume the faded remains of recreation. Long stretches of cracked road were overgrown with wild grass and moss creating a jungle like atmosphere just steps from the pavement. The 250 year old mark made by America conquering and harnessing the power of the land was quickly eroding. Betelgeuse thought that the trip would be part business and part nostalgia but as they traveled it became apparent that what they were driving through was a completely different country from a completely different era.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

22




The team set their sights on a camp just outside of Sacramento California. The closest meet up point relative to all parties involved was at Zigoat's shitty apartment in the equally shitty central coast town of Santa Maria. The working plan was to drive North and meet up with one of their message board contacts at a secure location in San Jose. After that checkpoint, a little finesse and improvisation would have to be used. The zombie hunters knew that they could rely on the generosity of others for supplies and shelter but convincing others to give them a ride or let them borrow their vehicles would surely be a difficult task.

On the eve before the group embarked on their journey they penned a paranoid list. A paranoid list was a sheet full of questions that authority figures might ask. Should any member of the team get separated and interrogated they wanted to insure that their collective stories jibed.  Their cover story was good but Betelgeuse also needed to be certain that the origin of their meeting place was kept secret. If one of them accidentally let it slip that they had met on an online forum to discuss various zombie related conspiracies the results would be catastrophic. 

As with all good lies the team decided to keep the details of their relationship as close to the truth as possible  and only omitted or altered the parts where the words "government" or "conspiracy" appeared. The crux of the lie was that the team was searching for information in order to assist the government in finding a cure for the condition. Well into the early hours of the morning KATT continued the refrain "We want to give America's young minds anything we can to engender a positive result. We are all in this together."

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

21




The Trojan Horse was called "The Cure: America's Sadness." The group had decided that their cover story would be that they were filming a documentary about the proliferation of the condition throughout the country. This way they could gather film, interviews and photographic evidence without tilting their hand to the powers that be. Of course they knew they would be lied to and that they would receive a ration of disinformation in order to disguise the truth. However, they hoped that somewhere along the way the might uncover some classified information to reveal the range and scope of the conspiracy. 

It was decided that Murkin would stay behind and out of sight, the group could not risk the chance of him being identified and compromise the mission. After a long discussion they decided a group of five was the most manageable and believable size for a documentary crew. Betelgeuse opted to pose as the host of the film while another board member Zigoat offered to be cameraman. Another user Matrix11 did lighting and Chupacabra posed as a writer. Finally, KATTeyez a red headed minx elected to hold the boom mic and employ her womanly wiles to extract information should the opportunity arise. 

The nearest holding camp was just over 300 miles away from their meeting point.  The team had access to a car but due to the stringent regulations on energy consumption they were only allotted one full charge of the Nissan Leaf's battery. Even though mileage ranges had increased in the years approaching the epidemic there was no way that a car packed full with five adults and supplies could make it to the holding camp and back on one full charge.  



Saturday, April 6, 2013

20




The first problem that Betelgeuse had to overcome was visibility. In the real world Betel was a sizable man of six foot three weighing in at about 250 pounds.  Back in the year 2012 he could have walked into a Walmart and disappeared like any other nondescript dude in his late twenties but the case was much different in the infected future. In the modern day people only left their houses to get supplies or to travel to the houses of close family members while any other trip was met with great suspicion and interest.  To add further complexity to the situation the majority of families had been setting up exterior video surveillance. Even though there were very few people on the street, spending all day and night indoors was beginning to exacerbate America's dormant paranoia. A highlight of many weekly family conversations contained stories of the same stray dog who wandered from one camera feed into the next sniffing and pissing his way through the neighborhood.  What this all meant is that it was hard to go outside without being detected and it was equally difficult that once you were detected to keep the nature of your business a secret. There was simply no way that Betelgeuse and fifteen of his closest internet friends could go on quest to a government owned jail for zombies and not be seen.

Luckily the answer was simple.  According to Murkin the government wanted to keep their forced zombifications under wraps which meant that they would not openly arrest a group of people and poison them with the disease. Each member of the group self shot a video describing their current physical condition and their suspicion about the government infecting them. They claimed that should they or anyone in their party go missing that the government was entirely responsible. After the personal logs were made they were given to family and close friends to hide for safe keeping. The only thing left to do was to figure out how to get close enough to one of the prisons without being stopped. 

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

19




The message was from a board moderator named Betelgeuse. The content was brief and vague but at the very least it seemed to explain the disappearance. It read as follows:

"Murk, delete all of your posts and don't tell anyone else what you saw, I have a plan, I'll Skype you at 6 p.m. tonight."

The actual conversation that transpired later that day had to do with a tiny revolution that was brewing.  A not so quiet group of internet users had been gathering momentum on the unethical treatment of zombies. Evidently there was a differing of opinion of the exact moment when "life" ended. Some believed that death occurred when the heart stopped beating, some said death occurred when the brain no longer showed signs of activity. But the new age of people who were technically dead but still moving made it extremely difficult to decide what rights if any should be afforded to folks with the condition. Some people believed that anything that was a threat to life should be exterminated. Some let their emotions guide them and wanted to hold out for a cure. 

Betelgeuse just so happened to be at the forefront of the zombie survival movement. Once he got conclusive evidence that the government was creating zombified people he wanted to know more about the entire operation.  He was planning a reconnaissance mission to one of the large holding pens and was assembling a team of enlightened companions to go along with him. Since the powers that be were trying to keep their misdeeds under wraps it left them vulnerable, a vulnerability that Betelgeuse hoped to exploit and use to his advantage.