Walkers

May 15
This is my journal. I am writing this with voice recognition on my computer. There may be errors – I’ll try to correct them later. Today is Friday. The week started out like any other week:. I go to work at 3:00 PM, I get off of 1:00 AM, I go home, watch a DVD, eat too much for such a late hour, and maybe play a little guitar. In bed by 6:00 AM. Sleep till 1:00 PM and start all over again. It’s a wonderful life! (Or at least it was). I got home early in the morning -Thursday to me, but actually Friday morning-and right before I started to get ready for bed sometime around 4:00 AM, I Heard this blood-curdling scream. I mean fucking loud! It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and gave me a crazy jolt of adrenaline like an electric shock right in to my stomach. So I jumped up, grabbed my Glock 19 (a 9mm), turned out the kitchen light (so the light would not show when I opened the door), and cracked open the door. What I saw was this: a woman, out in the middle of the street struggling against what I assumed was an angry husband or boyfriend. He had a strong grip on one of her arms and she was trying to pull away. I had already started to calm down a little from my original level of startle, when the man pulled her arm towards his face and appeared to bite her! This time the scream was so horrific, I can’t even describe it. I could see the blood begin to drip almost instantly, and the only light was the street lamp.

Before I knew it, I was out the door and walking rapidly towards the pair. “let go of that girl asshole!” I was aiming my Glock 19 at low-ready in his general direction and without letting the muzzle cover the girl. I stopped about ten feet away, and pulled out my cell-phone. “I’ve already called the police! "Let go of the girl and don’t move! (at this point, I had just dialed 911). That’s when he turned his face towards me, the streetlight lighting half of it. Something was just not right. He had no nose, and a ragged, empty black hole where his right eye should have been. He did what I told him all right, he let go of the girl. She collapsed to the pavement and he came towards me. Not too fast, but fast enough to get my attention. “Stop right there! I said stop right there! I will shoot you!” he kept coming towards me, and of course I took a few steps back but he kept coming. So I shot him. Center–mass. He shrugged his shoulders, and kept right on coming. So I shot him twice more, again center– mass. This caused him to hesitate for a second or two, and then he came towards me again. So I aimed for his head and squeezed the trigger again. It wasn’t a nice clean bullet hole in the center of his forehead, as one would expect to see in a movie. Instead, I blew off the left side of his lower jaw. Now he was looking really ugly, and my adrenaline level was so high, that the next shot could have been even worse. But it wasn’t; I put the next round right into his gaping nasal cavity (I think). Because I did not see a bullet hole, or any more pieces of his face disappear. What I did see, was a cloud of blood and brains appear behind his head, and I heard a faint sound of it splattering on the pavement as the sound of the gunshot faded. The sound was faint probably because I was pretty much deaf from the four gunshots. This time, he stopped coming. He fell flat on his back and his head made a sickening, hollow, cantaloupe noise as it hit the street. I approached the girl, who was lying face down on the pavement and then I remembered I had dialed 911 (oh Jesus, it will all be on tape!) But when I looked at my cell phone, it had “call failed” on the display. I tried 911 again. This time I heard the strange-sounding cell phone busy signal before I got the same “call failed” again. That was pretty weird in a town where the police were usually only three or 4 minutes away. I put away my cell phone, and holstered the Glock and knelt down to check on the girl.

“Ma’am, are you OK? I’m trying to call 911 but I can get through.” She moaned and stirred as though she was going to raise herself up from the street and suddenly she projectile vomited a stream that looked like it went five or six feet. After all I’d been through in the space of just a few minutes, the vomiting did not upset me, but it did concern me. Maybe she was going into shock. Suddenly, I became aware of several people walking into the street from nearby yards and approaching us. Neighbors I thought. But they did not speak and they were not moving very fast. I looked up at them. Some of them had pieces missing. Of course, the missing pieces were different than the guy I just shot. There were two men and one woman. I notice a woman looked like she had a big smile at first, until I realized she had no lips. She wasn’t smiling at all. One of them in had no ear on his left side and was missing part of his left cheek. The other man looked pretty normal except he was missing his right arm from the elbow down. He was not your typical amputee. Oh no! He was a recent amputee, with strands of flesh, bone and blood hanging and dripping down. This was not good! At this point everything seemed to slow down. They were getting too close, so I screamed “stop or I’ll shoot!” of course, they did not stop –so I had to shoot. One shot for each center-mass more-or-less. They did not stop but they were not too close yet. I had to get the woman away from danger. So I bent down, raised the girl into a sitting position, Leaned her over my shoulder into a Fireman’s carry, and ran back into my kitchen. At this point, I should have already explained that my house is on a corner lot. The front door faces a residential street at the front of the house, and the back door faces a cross street, which is like a main drag. The cross street is usually fairly busy, but not at 3:00 AM. Except tonight it was much busier than usual. I carried the girl into the kitchen around the corner into my den, and laid her down on the couch. Then I looked at her wounded arm. The word “wounded” is an understatement! She had a huge, gaping human bite wound that was as big around as a small apple. It was bloody, but it wasn’t bleeding all that much. I was kind of surprised at this because I had not had time to apply pressure. I went to the guest bathroom in the hallway, grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, some triple-antibiotic ointment and some gauze and tape. I poured some hydrogen peroxide on the wound and it fizzed energetically as I expected. A placed some gauze on the wound, applied pressure and held it in place. That’s what I heard the knocking at the kitchen door. I wondered if it was a police (which wouldn’t be strange after gunshots in the street), but then it hit me: the sounds at the door were not so much knocks, as they were thumps. Then I remembered the three I had just shot at before bringing the girl inside. The thumps and bangs continued, and then I heard a man scream somewhere outside. It was very loud and high–pitched, but it was a man. I also heard sirens in the distance. It sounded like a fire engine, but I wasn’t sure.
May 16
The woman is dead. She seemed to sleep after my first-aid treatment, then she became feverish and delerious. She died suddenly at 2:00 AM or so. I covered her up with an old blanket and tried to think what I should do. The land line was down and cell service was out. I just sat there trying to figure out what to do. I must have been sitting like that for four of five minutes when she sat up. Then she stood up with the blanket still over her head. I didn't shoot her then because I didn't know if I had made a mistake about her dying. So I pulled off the blanket. Jesus! She was dead. Her eyes were dead. But she was up! She groaned and came toward me, drool dripping from her mouth. I shot her in the face, just below her right eye. She went down and stayed down. This time it was my turn to throw up.