The Agrinautica

   “There have been several officer-involved shooting incidents in the Los Angeles area in the early hours of this morning, though Police Chief Charlie Beck has issued a statement assuring us that the situations were unrelated and should not be cause for alarm” [click]
   “…and reportedly a fourth incident in Lakewood” [click]
   “…clearly the police are out of control Tom, I think there’s more to the story of this morning’s shootings, and I’m demanding answers…” [click] why is it always talk radio in the mornings?? David wonders. It’s something he had often wondered. The drive to work would be much more peaceful with some good music, rather than jarring banter about the news or latest entertainment gossip.
   He turns off the radio and suffers through the morning rush-hour traffic in silence. It’s going to be another one of those days, he thinks to himself as he finally pulls into the parking structure at work. He walks briskly into the building, emerges from the elevator and enters the offices of the law firm at five to nine. Alyssa, the office manager, pointedly looks at her watch as he walks past. Another day in paradise, he says to himself.

   Ten A.M. at the coffee stand downstairs, the news is on: “…several more shootings reported this morning. This is a bit unusual, even for Los Angeles, here’s what people are saying on twitter…”
   “…well John, I do think there’s something going on here, I’m thinking it might be al-qaeda, or maybe the drug cartels are going to war in LA…”
   It's a bit odd but David doesn't dwell on it, street violence certainly wouldn't be permitted to spill over into the nicer parts of town.

   Around 11:00 David has sorted and delivered the mail, made all requested copies (and collated and sorted, and thought I spent four years in college to do THIS a dozen times), refiled all case files and loose documents that the lawyers are done looking at. He’s swept the floor and collected all the random paperclips. He’s even lined up the pens so they’re all lined up in a row on the table. He sits down to try to think of something else to do, and at that moment Alyssa walks in. She’d be attractive if she weren’t such a bitch – She’s only a few years older than David. Blonde hair in a ponytail, cute black collared shirt and knee-length pin-stripe skirt. With only a brief disapproving glance at David she steams out again.
Though she’s no longer in the room David jumps up and paces around looking for something to busy himself with. Minutes later he receives a call from the temp staffing agency whom he technically works for,
   “Is everything alright, David?”
   “Uh, yeah, why?
   ”Well, we just received a call from the office manager over there, she said you didn’t seem to be working very hard…”

   As the day goes on, the support staff are increasingly speculating about just what IS going on out there. – the lawyers themselves seem oblivious, all too drowned in the pursuit of “billable hours” to notice. While delivering and collecting things from secretaries’ desks, David notes that many of them have the news up on their computer monitors. It’s peculiar news, but it doesn’t make the day go any faster. If anything it makes the day seem even slower, as David becomes impatient to go on lunch and have an opportunity to catch an uninterrupted news report. The clock slowly ticks around to noon.
   Finally it’s twelve and David rushes off downstairs and across the street to the food court. As he wolfs down his thai food he catches snippets from the television despite the crowd around it – “…eyewitnesses report ‘dozens and dozens’ of shots fired…” “…the police department is still saying that there’s no reason to panic, though they have added that people should not travel unnecessarily in Los Angeles today.” “…here’s an interesting new report John, we’re getting reports now of CDC vans – that’s Center for Disease Control – near some of the accident sites.”
   An eyewitness describes how one of the shooting victims was "acting crazy" and kept coming at the cops despite being shot "dozens of times." the news anchors speculate it might be some new drug. Just before the end of lunch there's actually footage from a news helicoptor of someone (their face blurred) walking lurchingly down a street as people run away. A police car peels in and the officer is seen shouting from behind his door, two more squad cars swoop in beside him and the blurred figure starts towards them. You see muzzle flashes from the police's hand guns and the figure doesn't seem to hesitate. The police pour a continuous fusilade of fire on the figure, and though the news has blurred out a wide area around them you can tell there are clouds of blood being knocked off. Finally the figure stumbles to the ground but still appears to be moving. The channel cuts to the anchors again, who seem visibly shaken, at a loss for words for a moment before desperately launching into inane babble.

   David returned to work a bit shaken himself. This was no longer and odd distraction on the news, this was becoming quite concerning. Office staff no longer tried to hide that there were more interested in listening to the news than doing work. A senior lawyer came out and yelled at everyone for not working. David noticed the offices of the firm's partner's were empty. Soon it was in the news that the national guard had been called out, and as columns of humvees moving down the streets were shown on the new, one by one empty chairs started appearing behind desks as secretaries came up with excuses to go home to their families or just plain left.
   By three most of the support staff had disappeared. Unfortunately since David’s immediate supervisor was Alyssa, he knew he was unlikely to get permission to leave early. Finally around three thirty, with nearly no support staff remaining, David was walking past with a box of files when Alyssa emerged from her office looking flustered and distracted.
   “Hey, um, everyone’s going home early today. You can, um, clock out and go home” she said as she locked her office door. David straightened out his work area, grabbed his coffee travel mug, and was out the door. None of the lawyers had moved.

   Overhead dark clouds scudded across the sky on September winds as David entered the parking garage. As he exited, he called his mother and sister, and found out they were home already. He called his girlfriend but she didn’t pick up.
   Unfortunately the drive home was along the 91 freeway, just south of Los Angeles county and jam packed with traffic out of LA on the best of days, and on this day it was barely crawling. David sat in the mired traffic and listened to the radio, no longer noticing that no stations were playing music.
“we’re here in the Channel 7 newscopter over Crenshaw Boulevard and it looks like there’s a general disturbance down there, lots of people running around…” came in amid the background beat of helicopter blades “…there appear to be several people covered in blood and, oh god, one of them has just tackled a woman and … we’ve got her zoomed in on the camera here and she’s struggling, and, I can’t tell but it looks almost like he’s biting her. And now she’s not moving and he’s running again. He’s come up on the cars backed up at the freeway onramp now Ron. He’s trying to pull the driver out of this car it looks like. And someone else just grabbed him from behind to pull him off. Okay now there’s two men trying to hold the crazy one down, he’s gotta be on drugs or something Ron he’s giving them one hell of a time … oh it looks like the woman he attacked earlier is okay, some neighbours are tending to her and it looks like she’s getting up now and… oh my god she just lashed out at them, I don’t believe this Ron. Now they’re running away. She’s running toward the onramp and … okay now people are getting out of their cars and running up the onramp to get away. The men who were trying to subdue the first man are running up the onramp as well, they appear to be bleeding and the first man doesn’t seem to have been slowed down. I don’t believe this Ron, this is madness.”
   David eyed the bumper-to-bumper traffic around him nervously. It was essentially not moving. The people in the other cars were looking around nervously themselves, no doubt listening to the same reports, and having the same thoughts.
   “…there’s a veritable stampede down the highway now, Ron, cars can’t move and people are getting out and running—“
   “—where are the police Jerry can you see any police there?”
“Yes the police have arrived at the base of the intersection but, I think the situation is just getting out of control here Ron, the police are spread too thin. This immediate situation here would take a number of cars to secure the area but, you know, there’s still ongoing situations throughout the city”
   “What about the national guard, have you seen any of them yet?”
   “No Ron, they just got called in an hour or so ago so they’re not suited up and out on the streets yet. Also, Ron, in this case right here the police car can’t drive up the onramp past the abandoned cars either”
   David nervously tapped his fingers on the wheel, and felt sweat trickle down his back despite the car being well-cooled by the AC. He tried calling his girlfriend again but the network was busy.
   “Ron, we’re watching a police officer engage one of these … people. It looks like he just emptied his pistol’s magazine into the man and he’s still coming. Now he’s using the tazer and the crazy is down …. And he’s back up as if nothing happened. Officer is backpedalling quickly. Two more squad cars just got here. Many many shots fired. If you’re broadcasting the live feed from the camera, I’m sorry you’re probably having to blur out a lot of blood. I can’t believe this though. Okay it looks like the man is down.”
   David noticed several cars pulling onto the highway shoulder to try to get ahead, but within minutes that avenue was completely clogged as well. A few motorcycles weaved through the stopped cars. One motorcyclist even looked like he was bleeding on the arm.
   “Oh we’ve got a bad looking situation here Ron, people are stampeding on the 5 north from just north of downtown, and I'm assuming it's the same south of the city, this can’t end well. As you know the highway is raised above the street level here and you can’t easily get off where there isn’t an offramp. I don’t know how this is going to end, there’s people chasing the crowds from both sides. And it looks like a number of elderly or otherwise, a number of people haven’t gotten away in time all along the way and have been attacked. On the city streets the police are forming cordons around places order is breaking down but this situation on the roads Ron…”

   Just then the first runner went past David’s car. He realized his heart was pounding, and at this realization that the events on the radio were catching up to him, he suddenly felt faint. There was the sudden sound of numerous car doors as the people around him started to get out. Almost in a trance he found himself opening his car door to step out. Someone attempting to hurry between cars was stopped by the opening door and cursed angrily at him before squeezing past. He looked in the direction the crowds of people were coming from and could just see an ever increasing crowd coming along. In the air above, a news helicopter passed over, flying low. He grabbed his phone, shut the car door, locking it out of habit, and began jogging in the direction everyone was going.

   As he made his way with the surreal procession of people weaving between cars on the freeway, David’s phone rang, it was his girlfriend Jessie.
   “Jessie! Where are you??”
   “Hey I’m alright, I got down to Travis’s here in Aliso Viejo. You should come down here too it sounds like all hell’s breaking loose in LA right now.” David was relieved to know his girlfriend was with his best friend down in southern Orange County, 30 miles or so south of the LA border.
   “I’m going to meet up with my mom and sister, and then I don’t know what we’ll do. It’s crazy though Jess, I’m currently walking down the freeway!”
   “Oh my god you’re what?? You’re on the freeway?? It’s on the news! The freeways! You need to—“ the line cut out. He tried calling her back but the network was busy again. He began to feel even more uneasy about no longer having the car radio piping breaking news to him.
It would only be a few more miles to his mom’s house. Funny how what takes only a few minutes to drive can suddenly feel so great a distance when you’re on foot. Earlier there had been a few motorcycles weaving between cars but they had all either gotten ahead by now, or perhaps gotten on offramps in search of less congestion on surface streets, or simply become mired in the crowds.
   The crowd here was channeled along the freeway by high walls on either side. Slowly the crowds got thicker as more people moving faster from further back caught up. David and others found themselves inadvertently picking up the pace as they were surrounded by more and more people in a greater hurry. He heard an older woman cry out as someone rudely shoved past her, but the shover didn’t take notice. He passed a woman pulling two small children along by the hand – the children both looked terrified, and were constantly jostled by people hurrying past. A few people were bleeding, and David found himself wondering whether it was from scratches they got in their mad hurry, or actual contact with the berserkers. Every now and then a news helicopter would rumble overhead, and, most alarming of all, gunshots rang out in the distance frequently.

   Quite suddenly people began colliding with those in front of them, forward progress apparently stopped somewhere down the line. Thousands of voices expressed alarm and confusion. People continued to try to jostle their way forward through the crowd. Amid a great amount of shoving, people actually started moving backward, though many stubbornly tried to keep their places. Then the rumours flying around congealed into one statement: “they’re in front of us! Go back! Go back! They’re in front of us!” There was panic and screams. More people were still coming up from behind, and the crowd became more compacted. David climbed on the hood of a car simply for lack of space, but also to see ahead. The crowd was being pushed back for the next several hundred feet ahead, with more and more people clambering on top of cars to get away. Forward of that it looked like a moshpit from a rock concert -- the crowd was a thrashing turbulence. Periodically people got through the turbulence and would dash off forward to the offramp that lay a short distance beyond, or continue down the freeway. Beyond the distrubance thre freeway was still packed with abandoned cars and a desperate crowd beyond the disturbance ever more desperately fleeing. David could tell many people were getting hurt by eachother in their desperation to get away.
   Looking back in the other direction, it was just more compacted crowds for about a mile, but beyond that the freeway was ominously empty. Movement brought his attention back forward, and he saw that the compressed crowd had suddenly burst forward past the turbulence. All down the line people started moving forward again, but David stayed on top of the car. From where the turbulence had been he still saw people suddenly falling down, or jumping out of the way of something David couldn’t make out. The momentum of the crowd faltered and David could see once again a break in the crowd there with the forward edge of the crowd once again trying to retreat from that point. He saw several people a the front of the crowd get pulled down screaming but he couldn't see what was there. A few intrepid people dashed over the tops of cars in the area. Finally the crowd pulled back and David could see that the way between the cars had become blocked by piles of bodies. To his horror he saw a person, covered from head to toe in blood, lurch up from the pile and lunge madly at the crowd. Once again the crowd lurched backwards.
   Looking back the other direction it looked like the back end of the crowd was getting closer as well.
   Just a short distance ahead of David someone kicked in a maintenance door in the wall. Like the drain pulled in a bathtub, the surrounding crowd all began rushing for the narrow exit. People fell to the ground in the rush and were could be heard shrieking as people continued to hurry over them. David hoped desperately they were not being trampled to death. Several desperate scrabbles broke out in the narrow doorway, with punches thrown. Several other doors had been found in the wall at various points and David could see identical situations happening at all of them. Looking at the front line of the crowd David could see it was coming back faster now, with what appeared to be more berserk blood covered people wildly attacking the crowd. Evidence of how far forward the crowd had been was plainly visible, as the roadway for several dozens of yards further on was riddled with bodies and splashed with crimson blood.
   Making it through the nearest door looked like it would require a lot of fierce jostling with the crowd, but it surely wouldn’t get easier before the murderous berserkers got this far. Just as David was about to try to wade through the crowd he spotted the woman with the two children nearby. She was clutching them to herself looking terrified, and they were both bawling.
   “You need to get out that door!” he shouted at her above the din of panicked voices. She stared at him helplessly. “Here let me help you!” he shouted, and reached to pick up the larger child. The child looked at her and she nodded, so he permitted himself to be picked up.
   David was able to make it about a car length, with the woman and other child right behind him, before he found the crowd absolutely impassable. He placed the child on the hood of the car and then climbed up himself. The woman passed up the other child and then followed herself. They were able to do this to get ahead a few more car lengths but then there were already people clambering over the cars and to attempt to go over them meant risking getting shoved off. This close to the doorway the crowd was moving fast though, so David turned his back to the crowd and tried to push backwards through the mob, holding the one child and with the woman and other following closely behind. He almost tripped, and, looking down, saw someone’s arm and a lot of blood on the ground. A finger moved and David looked away, feeling sick. Forward progress was difficult on account of the ferocity with which terrified people were pushing back from the violent end of the crowd. Blood curdling screams sounded terrifyingly close in that direction.
   With renewed vigor David threw his back into the crowd. Someone elbowed him roughtly in the head, he felt someone else hook their arm behind his neck to lever themselves forward of him. All around him people were desperately scrabbling. Suddenly he felt the people on the doorward side of him disappear and himself roughly shoved in that direction. He didn’t bounce off of another person this time but felt himself fall down onto a sloped embankment, slippery with churned up ice-plant. He rolled down the embankment a dozen feet, doing his best to protect the child. Finally he came to a rest in a pile of squirming people. People were scrambling, scratching and kicking. He tried to get up but another person landed on him knocking him further into the pile. He was able to push the child to the edge of the mass of people, and after a little more struggling in the crowd managed to get to his feet on the edge and stumble free. He was covered with scratch marks and throbbed in several places from kicks and elbows.
   Looking back at the mass he was greatly relieved to see no bloody zombie-like monsters, it was simply people getting pushed out the door, sliding down the slippery embankment, and then panicking when they found themselves all in a pile on the bottom. As people got pushed to the edge they picked themselves up and either ran away or looked for friends and loved ones they might be with.
   David found he had lost track of the woman with the other child before he went through the door, and didn’t see her in his immediate scanning of the situation, but he had done his part to get them off the freeway and now he had to look after himself. Turning around, he found they were next to a suburban street. The owner of the nearest house was busily nailing planks over his windows. Not sure exactly where he was, David ran in the direction most other people seemed to be running.

   Running down the suburban street, David tried calling his mom again but the network was still busy. In front of a number of houses people were hurriedly throwing possessions in cars. There weren’t many cars on the road here but every now and then one would come squealing around a corner. David came to an intersection with a geyser of water shooting up in one corner where a fire hydrant had been bowled over by a car. He went left to try to continue in the direction he had been going on the freeway. A short distance down this road, however, he saw people running back towards him, and he realized the offramp that had been ahead on the freeway was probably down this way, spilling the freeway’s chaos into the neighborhoods. He backtracked and ran to the intersection and took the road that lead further into the city. A steady stream of people were still coming from the direction of the freeway.
   A national guard humvee rumbled towards and past him, with a uniformed soldier riding in the roof hatch with the large roof mounted 50 caliber machine gun in front of him. Feeling a little safer because of this, and with a painful side-ache from running, David slowed down again to a brisk walk and tried to picture in his mind how to get home from here.
   His sense of safety and distraction were soon shattered by the staccato of the heavy machine gun. First there were several short bursts and then it fired continuously, accompanied by the smaller sound of what must be the other soldier’s M-16s. David began running again. The gunfire faded away into, what David realized suddenly was a general background din of sirens, people screaming or yelling near and far, dogs barking, and frequent isolated bangs. Every now and then more heavy machine gun fire could be heard at various places. It sounded like it was particularly heavy near where the offramp had been.
   I think they’ve contained it on the freeway. God I hope they have David found himself thinking. The crowds of refugees had increasingly thinned out the further he got from the freeway, with some coming and going in opposite directions at intersections. He passed a body face-down on the lawn and just hurried quickly past it.
   He heard a shout of profanities up ahead and saw a man in a business suit backing away from a figure that was lurching towards them. David looked backwards but it was a long ways to the last intersection, he didn’t want to lose that much ground and time with things having every appearance of getting worse by the minute.
   There was only one of the zombie-like figures, it wasn’t moving very fast, and the street was broad, David decided to take his chances trying to dodge around the figure. As he got closer, he could see that it was a middle aged woman. She appeared to have some severe bite marks on the upper arm, but otherwise looked physically normal. She had a vicious unthinking feral look on her face though, and moved in an awkward lurching fashion. The man was still backing away from her, uselessly shouting “No! Go away! Shoo!” at her.
   David came up on them, staying on the opposite side of the street. The woman noticed him and seemed unable to make up her mind to stumble towards him or the man. While she was thus distracted the man edged around until they were on opposite sides of her, and then they both ran past her and down the street. The man became winded and had to stop running long before David, and soon David was on his own again.
   Despite the horrors he had already seen, David was stopped in his tracks when he came upon a house that had several bodies in a bloody mess on the front lawn. Their positioning seemed indicate they’d been trying to walk towards the front door, and moving his eyes towards the door itself, David saw that a table at been upended in front of it to create a barrier, and behind it, just in front of the doorway, sat a man with a grey mustache, trucker cap, Vietnam era camoflauge jacket, and brandishing a shotgun, with another slung on his back. As soon as David hesitated the man aimed the gun at him and called out “you god damn better keep walking!”
   David didn’t need a second invitation, he was on his way! He turned onto a familiar street at the next intersection, home was only a few blocks away! He stepped out of the way of a man carrying a rake – the pronged end of it was alarmingly bloody. It was no longer safe to walk in the middle of the road, as what cars there were usually came screeching down the street at a reckless speed. Everyone going anywhere seemed to be in an urgent hurry.
   Up ahead three figures were pounding on the front door and boarded up front windows of a house. From their ungainly movements David could tell they were “infected.” David also noticed that the front windows were smashed in on several of the houses that hadn’t boarded them up. Some of the shards of broken glass had blood on them.
   David tried to quietly hurry past the three on the other side of the road, his heart pounding, but to his horror first one, turned and looked at him, and then the oter turned and all three started quickly shambling towards him with drooling slack mouths and vacant eyes. He turned to go the other way but saw two more climb out of a broken window in that direction, heedless of the broken glass, and start to head towards him. He frantically looked from one group to the other. The figures were able to move surprisingly fast considering their ungainly gait, and it would be hard to get past either group without being potentially intercepted. He could dart between the houses, jump some fences, and come out on the other side, but there were too many unknowns with that plan – he might end up cornered in a backyard, or even be set upon by an unfriendly dog that had been worked up to a frenzy by all the chaos. He prepared to try to run past the two that had come out of the window.
   He ran towards them on the same side of the street as they, so that at the last minute he could veer around them in the street. As he prepared to run to the other side and pass them, a body he hadn’t noticed lying facedown on an overgrown lawn on that side picked itself up with the unmistakable movements of a the infected. David took a quick look behind him and confirmed that those three were closing in on him from that side. This was about to be very close.

   Just as David was beginning his run to get between the two window zombies and the new lawn zombie, he heard the screech of tires right behind him and three loud thumps. He couldn’t help but glance back again – a police car had come skidding to a halt right on top of the three zombies, which it must have bowled over.
   “GET DOWN!” the driver shouted. David hit the asphalt as the officer aimed an M-16 out the patrol-car’s window and unleashed a quick burst at each of the two zombies. The shots were aimed at their heads, and David noted that though they were each hit several times in the head – each hit marked by a sickening sort of crunch and cloud of red—they didn’t seem terribly deterred. They were alarmingly close and continued approaching. One of them, who looked to be a young man wearing a “hurley” shirt and backwards baseball cap, appeared to be having trouble seeing straight, David tried not to look at his one eye that was dangling out of his head. Two more bursts of gunfire just about destroyed both their heads, and they both slumped to the ground in pools of blood.
   The officer tossed his gun back on his passenger seat and hit the gas, hitting the lawn zombie and sending him flying. He landed in a broken and crumpled state, but was still moving so the officer moved his car relatively close and took several single shots at point blank range at its head until it stopped moving. “get somewhere safe and stay there!” shouted the officer to David, before speeding off.

I've often found it disappointing that nearly all zombie movies seem to skip past the beginning, fast forwarding to a point where everyone is already desensitized to the whole situation. I've been wanting to write a story that takes us through the very beginning of it, as the rigorous iron of social norms (such as office ettiquette) slowly gives way to the complete breakdown of society. For example I think the tremendous taboo against murder would prevent even adequately armed people from actually shooting a zombie until they were absolutely forced to, as social taboos are eroded. If I continue the story I was thinking I'd mirror the rescue of the child with David less prone to look out for others later on, as well as a key moment when he first has to kill a zombie himself.
   Also, in pondering how it would actually unfold, I was really struck by how the freeways would act like a wick or fuse, first becoming completely clogged and then becoming the panicked stampede, with some "infected" people with minor bites or scratches carrying it ahead like sparks before turning themselves.

Part of my continuing coverage of the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, this story is preceded by Patient Zero and followed by 28 Hours Later

   Yesterday I noted some of my complaints with existing zombie stories, in this entry I am going to lay out some of the basic ideas I have in mind for my story.

General Themes and Ideas
   The most important basic idea boils down to a sort of Lord of the Flies meets zombies -- zombies are very easy to protect yourself against really, but desperate humans trying to escape something that terrifies them, that is an unstoppable force.
   And there's a very large number of post-apocalyptic movies and stories which feature survivors spending a lot of time shooting at eachother (and Mel Gibson), but those people are usually portrayed as some kind of future barbarian who just loves to shoot at people. I intend to have normal non-malevolent people overrunning eachother's defences simply out of panic.
   As I said yesterday, for example offshore oil rigs might seem impenetrable to zombies --- but every boat owner on the coast will soon be on his way out there, and that can't end well.
   The other big thing is that, for some reason, nearly EVERY single zombie movie, book, webcomic, graphic novel, etc, seems to completely skip the initial zombie uprising and fast forward to a world that is already post-apocalypic. I'm going to examine how it would go down and bring the reader along for the ride.

The Setting
   It's certainly easiest to write about what you're familiar with, so it'll probably take place in Orange County. OC isn't a bad setting though, since it has LA to the north, a likely origin of zombie apocalypses, and other than north through LA there are actually only two roads out of OC (!), the coast highway south through the marine base Camp Pendleton and the windy ortega highway through the hills in the SE corner. So with a zombie apocalypse spreading out of LA, people in OC will really be stuck. To the East through the Ortega Highway there's just Riverside County, which is already kind of a desolate wasteland full of meth zombies.
   And then one can deal with the military response coming from the south. And there's the mentioned oil rigs and Catalina Island.

The Zombies
   I did like the zombie virus as described in World War Z. I think I'd keep that, and the way it first started appearing near major international airports. I have a vague idea for a future story about Patient Zero, who contracts a disease in some obscure place, which normally doesn't destroy the world because it kills its victims to fast for them to infect anyone else, but Patient Zero happens to be immune, so he causes the zombie apocalypse and has to live through the whole thing. But that's a whole different story which probably wouldn't even be hinted at in this one.
   A key to the zombie apocalypse is, as seems to be the gathering concensus in zombie media, if you get any of their blood in your eyes, mouth, wounds, etc, or are bitten by them, you will slowly die and become a zombie. The potential slowness of this is key, because it allows future zombies to be hidden among any refugee group, leading to eventual severe distrust of refugees.
   One departure I think I'd make from everything else is the whole one-shot-one-kill thing. It's always portrayed that one shot to the head knocks them right out. The basic motor skills that are the only part of a brain they use only make up a small part of the brain though, way back in the brain stem if I recall correctly, so you can shoot their head full of bullets without necessarily stopping them. I think this will make them much more dangerous.

The Characters
   By far my least favorite thing about writing any stories is coming up with the mundane details of main characters. Even names. I hate trying to decide on names! And then there's all these other details you need to figure out in order to have a well rounded character ... and after all that, half those details don't ever come up in the story!
   I'm thinking the main character will be a lad in his early twenties experiencing the suburban middle-class post-college malaise I've seen so much. He has some dumb job that doesn't pertain at all to his college major (I'm kind of leaning towards working in a law office, mainly just because, again, it's what I did and know), and I'd like to put something hanging over his head like a pending court date for something (DUI? just keep reaching into the bag of personal experiences...! d: ) or a heap of credit card debt (thankfully NOT a personal experience!).
   I want him to have a coworker girl he does NOT get along with, maybe the office manager, whom he ends up spending most of the apocalypse running around with. And she will be attractive. In this I'm going to toy with everyone's expectation that there will be romance. Because I'm black hearted and cyncial, it will just be a giant tease, and they will not fall in love. But maybe they'll develop a tolerant sort of friendship based on mutual contempt. (:
   To be thoroughly "OC," protagonist's parents will be divorced. At the first sign of trouble the dad splits and is never heard from again, providing an "absent father" sort of thing. His mother gets zombified and he is unable to bring himself to shoot her, fleeing instead. Later is haunted by this so much that when his sister is zombified he does shoot her. Or maybe I'll reverse the mother and sister, I'm not sure what would be more meaningful.
   And in general, and I doubt the above family members will be the first and second persons he has the opportunity to shoot, overcoming the deep-seated taboo on not shooting people (however zombified) will be a Thing that doesn't come easy.
   Protagonist will also have a girlfriend, whom he is unable to reach before phones and everything go out. His best friend happens to be in her general vicinity though and is able to get to the girlfriend to help her get out. And that's the last we hear of them. With the hollywood assumption that a male and female who go through an adventure together will inevitably fall in love, I don't think I'll need to stoke that fire too much to make the reader and protagonist wonder if, somewhere, his friend and girlfriend are off falling in love.


Anatomy of a Zombie Apocalypse
(1) Sporadic police-containable incidents - The first sign of trouble will be news stories about strange occurrences in LA, possibly near the airport. Reported as police shoot outs, crazy people, strange disturbances, the news doesn't know what to make of it initially but it's ominous. The police can contain every individual incident but there seem to be more and more of them. Maybe just before things really hit the fan there's reports of CDC vans investigating.
(2) Flee! Before it's even entirely clear there's a zombie apocalypse on hand people are trying to get out of LA. Freeways out of LA, completely snarled every day by normal traffic, quickly turn into glorified parking lots.
(3) Powderkeg - the situation first explodes into a situation police can't isolate and control when zombies start occurring among, or at least reaching, the concentrations of people stuck on the freeways. These densely packed crowds go off like a powderkeg! Stampedes on foot stream between and over the cars down the freeway, many are trampled underfoot. People who have received a bite or infected scratch are among those running, spreading the disease like the sparks of a wildfire and causing sporadic explosions of outbreak "downriver" of some of the stampeding masses. It also backflashes back into LA from there.
   The book WWZ described "the Battle of Yonkers," where the military completely ineffectively met the zombies as they spread out of NYC. If there were a Battle of Yonkers in my conceptualization of it all, it would be the zombies spreading back into NYC from the explosion that happened among the refugees who had fled across the bridge already.
(4) Onslaught - Now in Orange County you have all the freeways already filled with stopped cars, and a zombie apocalypse spreading across the northern border. By now I think it's late afternoon / early evening of the first day (weird things began in the early hours of that morning). This is where people in OC, my characters included, realize they need to drop whatever they are doing, find their loved ones, and decide what to do.
   At first it's just a lot of panicked people running around, phone networks being overloaded, and impenetrable traffic in many places, but then at some point the leading edge of zombies comes through. From then on out there'll be an increasing number of zombies, and all the familiar adventures and antics that requires and entails.
(5) Infected refugee - some people with infections "turn" faster than others, and some might simmer for days, weeks. While refugees are initially enthusiastically ushered across the southern border in Camp Pendleton and possibly refugee camps set up around the periphery in the other directions, it is soon realized that every new refugee is a potential liability and every refugee camp is a liability. Several refugee camps will no doubt "explode" catastrophically before this is realized. I don't want to portray the government as just eager to drop the nukes like they are in many zombie movies, but they're going to have no choice but to realize every refugee needs to be treated like a liability. I think the border with Camp Pendleton will eventually be closed.
(6) Government Response - I'm not entirely sure how I'll bring about the collapse of the military except that, also unlike WWZ, they'll never have a massed entirely-zombie target area to blow away. I think their refusal to drop nukes on areas full of survivors mixed in with zombies will be part of the problem -- they have no way to fight the zombies adequately and just get wittled away themselves. Not that I think dropping nukes would really be an improvement either.
(7) Lord of the Flies - as people sort themselves out, fortified locations eventually crop up. Walmarts like I described here, malls, maybe even prisons (which would have a very interesting sociodynamic inside, what with the inmates and all), any naturally defensible location. These fortifications will probably turn a cold heart to those locked out even quicker than the government. But people desperate to make it to safety will find a way, even if they have to kill to do so. Thus will begin the first open hostilities between the living, and ultimately fortified locations will generally fall. This is also where those oil rigs fit in.
   This situation goes on, constantly wittling down the number of survivors, and the survivor's qualms with taking what they think they need from others, until we settle down into the familiar zombie post-apocalypse setting, more or less.
(8) Post Apocalypse - Zombies burn themselves out and after as little as perhaps a year are comparatively rare. So are people by then as well, reduced Ice Age population levels in little villages. Most of OC gets leveled by one of the yearly wildfires, and very quickly its a landscape of California chaparral growing among the blackened husks of houses, with untold multitudes of wildlife thriving amongst it.

The Exciting Conclusion
   After many adventures, which will conveniently bring to light many of the above developments, I think I have a happy ending of sorts in mind. Before the apocalypse is in the relatively peaceful Phase 8 above, the protagonist(s) find themselves cornered by a large zombie horde near one of the many coastal marinas ... and then what do they see but one of the few things I consider a truly good idea for zombie survival -- a traditional square rigged sailing vessel happens to be coming in looking for food (and again, drawing from personal experience ;) ). They happen to have use for two more crewmembers, so they take protagonist and that girl he's with aboard, and they sail off into the sunset.

   So there you have it, more or less. Tomorrow I will continue my TL/DR zombie saga with more details on the specific plot I think.

   The raiding party sets out from the village of Trabuco around noon. Leaving the cinder-block huts with their corrugated metal roofs and the surrounding wall behind them, they cross the cleared pastures around it and disappear into the thick scrub brush of the countryside.
   They follow the broad path of an old asphalt road, though it is so overgrown and cracked, with trees and large shrubs growing out of cracks throughout, that it is barely less sparsely forested than the terrain on either side that had once been suburban front yards.
   The warriors, clad in jeans and leather jackets that look like jigsaw puzzles of patches, clutch rifles as they cautiously pace through the scrub brush. They walk several paces abreast of one another in preparation for an ambush. Their leader beckons them off the old road and they push through thick California sage and buckwheat before passing between the blackened staves that once were a wall of a house. It only took a few years after The Event for wildfires to level the suburban sprawl and make way for nature to start reclaiming the land.
   Like many epidemics in nature, the "zombie apocalypse" had burned itself out. It was too lethal to haunt the world for generations, instead, in a little over a year it had exhausted itself. After infected and killing well over 99% of the human population there weren't enough left for it to spread.
   The remaining human population was spread out more sparcely than mankind had been in the ice age. For ten years humanity lived off the canned food hordes that would have sustained the former billions for a week. Then they began to realize they'd have to feed themselves, and with their guns began hunting the wildlife that had quickly begun to thrive among the ruins.
   David grasped his rifle anxiously. He didn't have any bullets in it. Neither did anyone else in the raiding party. It had long since been realized by all parties that bullets are a "non-renewable" resource. But as long as your enemy doesn't know how many bullets you do or do not have, a gun's still a formidable weapon.

   The neighbouring tribe of Anaheimites had recently taken to crossing into David's tribe's lands to steal the forage and resources. When confronted by the Anaheimite's roving gun toting bands, individual Trabucite hunter-gatherers had been forced to flee or submit to being relieved of anything of value. And so this punitive expedition was necessary to confront and put a stop to them. Bullets being an almost priceless resource, the expectation is that even if the other side has bullets they would rather preserve them, and a mere show of force will restore peaceful relations.

   Through a thicket of fragrant anise bushes the group approaches an embankment strewn with ancient plastic bottles. Metal cars rust away, houses burn and decay to nothing, but plastic bottles are forever.
   Atop the embankment is the broad clear swath of a former highway. It too is overgrown with grass, with tall weeds protruding from many cracks, but the thick concrete foundation has thus far still prevented trees or large shrubs from taking root.
   After carefully surveying the scene, at a signal from the group leader the warriors emerge onto the highway and pad quickly across it. About halfway across David's heart about stops as he sees a rival group move into the sunlight from the opposite side, rifles pointed at them. David's group is ready however and instantly has their guns trained on their opponents.
   David tries to will his hands not to tremble as he looks down the barrel of his gun. What if the Anaheimites DO have bullets? It's not an unheard-of possibility. Sweat trickles down his forehead, though he hadn't felt hot a moment ago.
   A plastic bag blows between the groups on the breeze. Birds chirp among the chaparral.
   To his horror, David sees the Anaheimites begin to slowly, menacingly, advance. There are a few more of them here, and in general they're a bigger tribe. If they aren't checked here and now they will surely overrun David's people's territory and the Trabucites will be pushed into the unforgiving hills, or worse, into Riverside County.

   Without thinking, David lowers his gun. They're not going to win this way. As if in a hypnosis he lets gun clatter to the ground and pulls a machete out of his belt. He begins to walk forward with a confidence he doesn't feel, as all the enemy rifles swivel slightly to bear on him. Let's hope they don't have bullets.

   Daniel placed the last cinderblock in the wall snugly and stepped back to survey what had been accomplished. All ground-level entrance had been solidly sealed with cinderblocks and mortar. "Let's see the zombies get through THAT!" he thought happily.
   With just a little warning, secure protection against a zombie outbreak seemed shockingly easy. Bricks and mortar are not hard to come by, and zombies aren't exactly super-man. Combine this with a complete lack of problem-solving abilities and it's really no problem.
   At the first news of the spreading zombie outbreak Daniel had taken his family and joined several others to hole up in the local Wal-Mart. With only a few entrances to begin with and just about everything you could dream of already stockpiled on the inside, it was the obvious choice. It had taken very little time to procure bricks and mortar to make the remaining entrances into solid walls themselves. Those inside would be able to get in and out should they find the need simply by accessing the roof and lowering ladders to get down. They would probably even find or make a rope ladder for easier raising/lowering of the entrance.

   Daniel ascended to the roof to survey the situation in the surrounding area. Distant sirens could be heard wailing in several directions, but more immediately there was a constant blare of horns due to the jammed traffic on nearby roads. The occasional pedestrian would run by on foot in a mad panic.

   Ladders would be lowered to fleeing refugees down below who weren't in so much of a panic that they didn't notice those waving from the roof of Wal-mart. As time went on and more people gave up on the snarled automobile traffic, foot traffic increased. Presently an argument arose among those on the roof about "how many people can we rescue? we can't save them all, we'll starve!" Tempers rose as those who couldn't dream of leaving people to fend for themselves below got in shouting matches with those who feared they'd be overrun with refugees.
   "What if one of them is infected??" asked someone's wife with a gasp. There was a moment of silent contemplation and then the "save everyone" contingent silently relented and the ladders were drawn up for the last time.

   The flood of refugees steadily increased to a veritable torrent. One by one those on the roof retreated back down into the store to avoid the pleading eyes of those they would not save. Daniel and the last few were about to go below when another man held up his hand "wait!" he said with an uncomfortable look on his face, "someone should stay up here"
   "Why?" another man asked
   "What if... they throw a ladder up on the side or something? Someone should, you know, be up here" he said, squirming a bit. It was clear who "they" was and it wasn't the zombies.
   Daniel gratefully avoided ladder tipping duty and hastily retreated down below to check on his wife and kids.

   Initially they had all dreaded the time when they'd hear the moaning of zombies surrounding their fortress, but something they weren't prepared for haunted them first. Cries of "Let us in!" and "please help us!" could be heard through the walls and drove the families as far from the walls as they could get. They all huddled in the shoe aisle near the centre of the store.

   People took turns patrolling the walls making sure the newly erected walls were holding up. People were clearly banging on them on the far side. There had been no shortage of man-power and materials though so they'd been made several feet thick.
   The sturdiness of the walls didn't stop the horrifying psychological impact though of the cries for help and fruitless banging on the walls. It sounded like there was quite the multitude out there now. Daniel tried not to even think about what it must be like having duty on the roof.

   Suddenly there was an incredible crash and the wall in front of Daniel exploded into dust and shards of concrete. Daniel dove behind a shelf of cheap plastic trinkets to dodge the shrapnel. When he jumped to his feet in disbelief to see what could possibly have happened he beheld frantic mobs of terrified people streaming into the store from the gaping hole that had just been made by someone driving a truck through the wall.

   Saying goodbye can be very hard. It can be heartbreaking, it can be a huge relief, it can be lifechanging, it can be touching.

   And unfortunately, saying goodbye is something we're going to have to do a lot of. Especially when the zombies come.


How To Say Goodbye, When the Zombies Come
   When the zombies come, there will be a lot of goodbyes. It will be terrifying and horrible and mindblowingly heartbreaking.
   We'll have to say goodbye to very society and civilization as we know it, but the hardest goodbyes will be to individuals. Most of the people you know will be reduced to shambling hulks. Many of your friends will be reduced to slavering monsters. And, worst of all, odds are people very close to you will succumb!

   To help us understand what it will be like to lose loved ones in this manner, I consulted local psychologist supremegoddess1. She explained that one will probably go through "some variant of Kubler-Ross theory -- the 5 stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance."

   Unfortunately your loved one will not simply be gone. They will either be wandering the streets in search of blood, or perhaps, worst of all, if you are around when they succumb they may be trying to KILL YOU. This is a deeply regretable occurance.
   If your former loved one is actively trying to kill you or someone you know, you will probably have to "kill" them. This, I would imagine, is probably one of the most traumatizing things that could happen to you.

   supremegoddess1 explains: "the inevitable violation of one's primary object attachment, no matter how socially altruistic, will consequentially invariably result in a devestating blow to one's ego strength and sense of relationship permanency. ...Incapicitated by the decision to be made, in which one cannot possibly win, we will logically be forever questioning and doubting ourselves." One can rationally conclude that destroying your love-zombie is necessary and logical and no longer really themselves anyway, but in the actual situation, one will surely be haunted with guilt over their actions for the rest of their lives. Once again we turn to the psychologist to explain what a guilt-trip is in clinical terms: "honestly we'd be just as likely to use the phrase "guilt trip" as any other." Well then.


   Next I turned to my friend Mark, a microbiologist, for a perspective from the more anatomical side of science. Once I explained the situation to him he had an answer immediately that I never would have thought of: "hold her down use a saw to open her skull and take out the brain, that way I can have a proper open casket funeral. Zombies dont work without the brain"
   This quickly led to us speculating that when the zombies come, we could start a business: "Brain Removal Specialists: Give your loved one the dignified burial they deserve!" !!!
   We would wear shark armour to protect ourselves from being bitten and use those animal control poles to subdue people's rabid loved ones. A tazer could also work as it will cause the zombie's muscles to involuntarily contract leaving them completely immobilized. We can then restrain them and Mark can do his magic.
   In this manner people will at least be able to have a tearful goodbye to their loved one's body without having it try to eat their brain.


   Finally, I consulted a Women's Studies major to get her perspective. When I explained that I wanted to discuss the upcoming zombie apocalypse to my friend Kerri, she responded "Dude I'm gonna grab a machete and fucking behead some zombies!!!" After I explained things a little further she commented "Mark is so going to get bitten. He's gonna see a hot one and think she's just being frisky when she bites him ...then I'm gonna have to cut his fucking head off! ...then I'll bite you just to be frisky." Rude.


In Conclusion
   So there you have it. The zombie apocalypse will be harrowing and aweful, and many of your goodbyes will be screamed as you run down the street to escape (former) associates. Those of us who survive will likely have such an overload of post-traumatic-stress-disorder that we'll be as crazy and dangerous as the zombies themselves.

   But at least I can offer you a dignified goodbye for your loved ones ... and employment for myself.


SEE ALSO
How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse - written for 30 in 30 -- and for those with absolutely no sense of humour no I don't really think there's a forthcoming zombie apocalypse, its just fun to write about!
Zombies: A Theological Examination - Actually a relatively serious short discussion on the theological implications of the Schiavo case as regards zombies.
Yasser Arafat Declared Undead, Fights for Undead Rights -- A satire based on the preceding week's confusion about whether he was still alive day by day
Braaaaains...torm -- If you STILL haven't gotten enough of reading about "Saying Goodbye" you can read my previously-locked brainstorm post where I explored more conventional approaches to this subject, and how I never say goodbye.
Footnotes

   I meant to read The Zombie Survival Guide before writing this entry, but I never got around to it. As such, this treatise will not benefit from the wisdom of that book (which I heard somewhere is pretty good). On the other hand, I can therefore say that everything contained herein is my original zombie survival thoughts.

   Anyway, as they say, "zombies are so hot right now." Last year it was pirates, now the hot ticket is zombies. Next year, maybe it'll be zombie-pirates, or something.
   One of my least favourite things is people acting like blooming idiots in movies. The primary reason I can't stand most horror movies is because I simply cannot stand the level of idiocy usually displayed by the protagonists. Zombie movies are no exception, what with people wandering alone into dark places, getting themselves cornered, etc etc. Here are my thoughts on how to survive.
   For the purposes of this entry, let us assume zombies tend to be fast like in 28 Days Later rather than the classic slow hulking.

When the Zombies Come
   Living humans have one major practical advantage over zombies: ability to intelligently use their their limbs. Use this to your advantage.
   Most obviously, this enables living humans to wield weapons. This fact almost never goes unnoticed. But it can also be used to manipulate one's environment.
   For example, can a zombie operate a doorknob? In 28 Days Later they seem to get around effectively enough that it would seem they can (vis-a-vis running around facilities that have metal doors which would be hard to break down), though this is never shown. They can certainly break down wooden doors, but what about a metal door with a simple doorknob? On any account, they certainly would not be able to get through a door operated by a keypad or a heavy locked door.
   In many zombie related scenarios, they are indeed thwarted by locked front doors, but inevitably break through windows, whether they are boarded up or not. What else can zombies not do without intelligent limb use though? They cannot climb ladders.
   If you can find an attic which can only be accessed by a ladder, you should be zombie safe. Additionally, tree houses should be suprisingly safe. In a pinch in fact, any tree or climbable telephone pole or such should be sufficient.
   And of course, there have been countless zombie related events where characters run and hide in dark places when a perfectly climbable tree or such was close at hand.

   With a lot of ground-level windows and a lack of internal doors and such, residential houses seem to be a zombie death trap, yet they are the perennial first line of defense in depictions. Others have recommended hiding in the woods. While this makes it less likely you'll run into zombies, it doesn't really make you terribly much safer if some do find you.
   At least in Ireland, and elsewhere in the Old World, there are abundant structures that are absolutely optimum for zombie survival. Places that have specifically been designed to be impregnable to zombie-style attacks. In Ireland, you are absolutely guaranteed to be with a days walk of a medieval tower or castle. Despite several hundred years of disuse, most of these are still sturdy to a height of several floors. Many towers do not even have a first floor entrance -- entrance was gained on the second floor via a ladder which could be pulled up to thwart the zombies enemy raiders. Find a ladder and be 100% zombie proof as long as you have food and the zombies don't develop advanced siege engines.
   Additionally, even the castles with first floor entrances frequently have sturdy metal gates placed in the entrance by the Office of Public Works to prevent people from going in and getting themselves killed (I could usually find a second or third floor window to clamber up through though). Break lock, replace with one of your own, and you're pretty good.
   Now of course, I'm pretty sure not one of you is in Ireland, and only a very very few are somewhere else where one might find castles. I just had to go on that tangent though because I thought it was rather novel that in the coming zombiepocalyse castles will be so useful.
   Lacking castles, I would recommend investing in a ladder (a rope ladder might be better since it'd be easier to pull up behind you), find a warehouse (they usually have few windows and doors), pile an ungodly amount of stuff in front of what ground level doors there are, break roof access lock, and call it your little castle.
   Basically I think a ladder is the single most important peice of zombie survival equipment. Zombies catch you wandering down the street with one, quickly prop it agianst a building and escape. Pull the ladder up with you and by the time the zombies reach your floor you can ladder your way down another side or make a bridge to the top of another building or something.

   Also note that since zombies can neither swim nor operate a boat, people out at sea on boats, small islands, or oil rigs, should be totally fine so long as their food holds out (learn to fish!)

   You will want protective clothing. At the most basic, you'll want long sleeves and pants, gloves, (and to protect against infected blood spray) goggles, and some kind of makeshift bandana or such to cover your mouth. You should be within walking distance of a firestation. Fireman gear will give you extremely good protection against zombie attacks, though it may be a little combersome for those not in good shape. Additionally, if you steal the firetruck, firehose is probably a great way to clear a crowd of zombies. For that matter, many firehouses have towers for such purposes as drying their hoses or practicing fighting fire, which may be only ladder-accessable and therefore a good zombie proof perch.
   The very most optimum zombie survival outfit would probably be riot police gear (as illustrated in 28 Days Later). Be sure to stop by your local police station to see if they have such equipment.
   If you're going for that medieval theme and there's a museum near you or something, a suit of armour should be pretty good too, though ultra heavy. Plate-mail is overkill, don some chain mail, pick up a longsword and shield, and practice your zombie killing battle cry.


When You Know the Zombies Are Coming
   In 28 Weeks Later, the government was presumably taking extensive precautions for a second zombie outbreak. It turns out this really just consisted of totally panicking and acting like idiots. It really got me thinking about what they should have done.
   It should have been fairly easy to zombie proof things as well. In the rebuilt parts of town, put heavy doors on every building and within the buildings. Make it so these are all opened by keypad -- you can make every code in the city "123456," it doesn't matter because there are no reports of zombies ever coming near the capability to intelligently enter such information. Secondly, the way buildings already have fire supplies about where you "break glass in case of fire" to access firehoses and extinguishers and such, place zombie survival gear in such a way. Specifically, make sure bite/scratch proof clothing is readily available for everyone.
   This alone should solve your problem. For extra safety maybe make it so you can easily cordone off small sections of the city to prevent outbreak spread.

   This of course doesn't look like the makings of a good movie, since if the government did this there'd be no outbreak and it would be quite anticlimatic. I think you could still make a movie however if you made the downfall of society come from human failings rather that blatant large-scale stupidity. Remember FEMA's poor response to Hurricane Katrina? You could make a point about that, where someone skimped on money or hired their friend who was just a horse-breeder to institute the disaster preparedness plans, and consequently the whole thing got botched up. Now, not only do you have people not acting implausibly dumb, you're actually making a point.

Join the Uprising!

   So I was walking back from the UC Davis Honeybee Research Facility out on Bee Biology Drive, trying to decide what semblance of an entry I could crank out before I hit the road. But when I got back here, the Honourable Justice Harney had sent me a link to the above zombie uprising blogevent. The basic idea is to blog as if there is a zombie uprising occuring around you at the very moment. See the above link for more info.


   Personally I had intended to write at least one zombie-related entry this month anyway. Unfortunately, as I will be driving most of the day, I'm not sure I'll have any time to blog lively about the breaking zombie uprising.

   And now I'm going to chart my course to So Cal and then take off ... since, you know, I'M FLEEING TOWN TO ESCAPE THE ZOMBIES WHICH ARE CURRENTLY OVERRUNNING DAVIS!!!

(Maybe we shouldn't have read aloud those incantations we found written in that notebook in the underground chamber marked with "No Tresspassing - High Voltage" and "Radioactive" signs eh team? Or maybe it was the mysterious container of unknown material witless_nerd removed that awoke the angry zombie masses)