Just the beginning...

It’s not like I imagined it. When I saw movies, it was easy to think about stomping around the apocalyptic landscape with a big ol’ gun, in make-shift homemade armor, maybe with a canine companion. Surviving, scavenging, helping others that needed help before I made my way to where ever I was heading. I always imagined myself cautious but fearless. It’s not like that at all…
I guess I was in denial, or maybe just too dumb to realize at first. It wasn’t until the National Guard arrived that I was really worried. Extremely worried when they instituted a curfew. That seemed like years ago. Apparently we weren’t the priority anymore because the troops were called somewhere else and they lit out of town. It wasn’t long after that. Not just my town, but everywhere. I remember looking out of the upstairs window and seeing dozens of them walking – if it can be called walking – through the field. Making their way directly to the complex where I lived. Everyone who had any sense was already gone, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was alone for the most part.
It was chaos everywhere else. Fires, rioting and looters where the biggest danger in the first days, or I should say the first hours. It was so turbulent you couldn’t tell the dead from the looters in all the smoke and screaming. Soon they were one and the same. Most of the looters were too caught up in what they were stealing to realize that the partner in crime next to them was about to take a chunk of meat out of their arm, neck or face. That’s when the riots and looting stopped, they were all turned.
I’ve been here for what seems like an eternity but it’s only been maybe a week since the riots stopped. I’ve been out one time, trying to find food, weapons, people. It’s not like the movies. There’s no fully stocked grocery store. There’s no gun store that’s been left untouched for me get a cart and fill up with bullets and rifles and pistols and grenades and medieval swords. I’ve found some stuff that might last me a couple days. Still no decent way to defend myself. I found a hammer. I managed to take up a sizeable portion of the stairs. I hope that will do for the short run, maybe I can have some sense of safety on the 2nd floor.
I sleep in the bathroom because it’s quieter. But you can still hear it. The moaning. It almost sounds like the wind, but the feeling of dread and terror it carries leaves me paralyzed. I know I will have to go out again; the furthest I’ve made it is the front door. I know I have to go out, but I don’t know …