Event Horizon

I spent the last two hours trying to get the Internet working on this computer, so damn right I'm going to use it. Typing is slower than usual having only one hand to use (hurts too much to use my left arm, even if Mr. C managed to get it popped back into place), but I am stubbornly making sure I type this right.

No word yet whether any of our families are all right. And my friends list seems incredibly calm about this. Dare I hope that this is a localized phenomenon?

Managed to get a glimpse of the highways out one of the windows -- bumper to bumper red lights, all on the way OUT of the city. I can see dark shapes moving between the cars...I don't think the highway was the way to go.

Got nothing to complain about, not here and not now.

In a little while, I'll get up to do my look-around on this floor (make sure none of the zombies around here figure out how to climb stairs), maybe get another cold bottled water from the break-room fridge. The movie-buff in me kind of wishes we'd gone by the Boyfriend's grandmother's house and gotten them, or at least the guns. Not sure if holing up so high in the building was a great idea, but it works for right now. The Boyfriend and Mr. C are looking through some of the other floors right now.

Oops, there's the radio. Gotta go.

Had to stop, collect my thoughts. Would rather talk to you all via voice post, so that I could pretend you were on the other side, something...but the Boyfriend yelled at me for talking on the phone after we escaped the library, so...yeah. It's why I've been silent until now.

My friends-list knows I'm wild about zombie movies. Zombie anything, really. But all the zombie movies in the world don't prepare you for the sound and the sight at the FEEL of a hammer sinking into the half-rotted temple of a ghoul as you fight your way through a fucking oven of a parking garage. The fact that we had to wear multiple layers of clothing -- since we have no heavy jackets or anything -- made it harder to move. But it also made it harder for them to get teeth into our flesh, so that was a bonus.

Their hands dragged at me, but I was fighting hard, panicked, and I was strong enough to break free. I heard the Boyfriend up ahead -- asshole had taken the opportunity when they swarmed me to get away, not that I would have reacted any different. He was pounding on a door, yelling for whoever was in there to "Come out! Come out! It's your last chance!"

They had me by the messenger bag I'd slung over one shoulder. I flailed away at them with my hammer, barely aiming anymore -- anything to break their grip, you know? -- and then there was pain. Up from my left shoulder, so strong I nearly blacked out. I was screaming -- I don't know if I was crying or not, my face was soaked wet with sweat that stung just the same -- "I've been bit, I've been bit!"

The Boyfriend charged them, grabbed me up -- there was someone else there, not sure who at the time -- and the next thing I know, I'm sitting on the corrugated metal floor of a freight elevator, sobbing for breath and hacking so hard I can hardly get one. The Boyfriend is on his knees in front of me, and he's pulling at my clothing -- it hurts, but I don't have the strength or the air to protest. Another man is at the front of the elevator, and he's not looking at either of us.

My sweatshirt had -- has -- a big rip along the arm seam, but the layers underneath weren't torn. I hadn't been bitten, but the zombies who'd been grabbing onto my bag had dislocated my shoulder. The Boyfriend told me all this later. At the time, all I knew was that he stopped trying to pull my clothes off and relaxed a little. I closed my eyes. I was sure that he was going to take my hammer and bash my head in.

But he didn't. He and the other man -- Mr. C, I'll call him -- talked to each other in low voices. They talked for a lot longer than the elevator would have taken to get to the top -- the building only has 50 floors -- even I could tell that. I opened my eyes, curious, and saw that Mr. C would lean down every so often near the buttons that controlled the elevator and switch the floor it was going to, keeping us moving. I don't clearly recall what they were talking about -- too tired. But eventually we stopped on one of the floors where the freight elevator opened up into a break room.

The Boyfriend and Mr. C barricaded the doors. I probably sounded like I was whining when I asked if I could sleep, but they let me.

Several hours of cowering before the dressers that we moved in front of the doors, in this heat, had me almost wanting to be bitten and dead. At least I wouldn't be sweating so badly. Or at least, I wouldn't be caring.

The dogs went crazy about an hour into our wait, barking up a storm. There was lots of yelling, too. But then it was very, very quiet. I tried not to think what this might mean. The Boyfriend got it into his head that maybe we should head for his work; they have restaurants there, and probably run on back-up generators of their own. We packed up what we couldn't see leaving behind -- some canned food, the flashlights, and the laptop for me -- and got our "weapons" (just tools from the toolbox, and the Boyfriend's beloved "big umbrella".

The way was clear to the ground floor, but gawd what a stink! The heat wasn't helping (since when has it ever, today?) and there were flies everywhere. The neighbors had set up deck chairs near one of the side "exits" from the back lot, which we knew from our earlier library excursion, so we didn't go that way.

I don't want to know what we would have seen if we did.

We stuck to the side streets, which were miraculously clear. I saw a couple of those things (I hesitate to call them "zombies", even though that's what every movie-honed instinct is screaming at me to say) by Skillman, gathered around a dead cat. Or at least what I hope was a dead cat. Otherwise, the streets were weirdly empty.

There was the occasional abandoned vehicle, but it was pretty easy to skirt those. Got more difficult as we neared Baylor, but the Boyfriend knew a way around that. We were more worried about how to get into his building -- after a certain time of night, you have to have a security guard open the door to the garage for you, going in or out. If there wasn't a guard...if the place had been compromised, we would have no "safe" way in. We would have to go in through the lobby -- which, believe you me, was the route favored by the zombies. Several of the skyscrapers we zoomed past had all their ground-floor windows and doors busted, with plenty of undead milling about. A few attempted to chase our car, but one snapped its ankles and took another down with it when it fell. The Boyfriend went faster, and the two left standing seemed to lose interest as I watched them shrinking in the rearview mirror's reflection.

The garage door was standing open as we approached. Had it been open for a while, we wondered, or had the Boyfriend's coworker seen us coming on the exterior security cameras? I tightened my grip on my hammer's handle and hoped it was the second one...

Pipermage managed to deactivate herself on the K!boards -- we're not sure how. Since our power was still out when she put in the "distress call", we headed to the library...after I hassled the Boyfriend awake and off the couch.

There must be some kind of "zombie walk" going on today, but I've never heard of one happening in a residential area. Really realistic costumes, too. They're all coming from the Baylor Hospital direction. No idea what could be down this way or why they're walking so far.

Library is mostly normal -- and by normal I mean full of people who just won't give up their computer time. Some jerk was using the computer we were assigned to, and apparently it's our fault for not kicking them off when their time was up. Funny, I thought that was what library workers were for.

And damn, I just got a fucking popup saying that I had ten minutes left, so how could Miss Fatass not notice that her time was almost fucking up, eh?

Well, whatever. At least my laptop battery is getting charged in their powerstrip right now. Maybe I can at least use the word processor or something when we get home.

I miss the electricity.

Huh. That's weird. One of the zombie walkers just staggered in the front door. I guess even political activists appreciate central air...