Thread: small helpful reminder

This is written from the viewpoint of one of the survivors who managed
to get away and live to write about it afterwards


It's been a couple of years now.
That is a couple of years after having been rescued along with 3 other survivors from the
city of New Orleans by helicopter or plane.
I can't remember which since before and after I've been on quite a few of both, just to get
to where I am right now.
Currently I'm living here on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, where I support
myself driving a cab.
Coming down here I decided to give myself a new start in life with a new attitude and a
new way of earning a living.
As opposed to my old way of gambling and conning others into giving me their
hard earned money.
Changing my attitude isn't so easy and trying to overcome a traumatic past with it's accom-
panying memories is even more difficult.

For me this is the crux of the matter, for my recent holocaust of a past is far from totally
gone.
I still dream about those zombies ( for lack of a better term) and I can still see them coming
after me in a horde.
I'm not the one who comes out of a nightmare screaming his head off but I sure do wake
up every so often with a cold sweat and a rapidly beating heart.
Then I have to pinch myself or slap myself in the face, to wake up and realize
that it was just a dream.
I can really understand now what some of those Vietnam vets went through after they
came home.
They would have these dreams or nightmares of being back on the battlefield and ex-
periencing all the traumas of combat in their sleep.
When I look at myself in the mirror I can see that look in my eyes that battle weary
soldiers have come to know as the " thousand yard stare ".
That look in someone's face that says they have been to hell and back.
Some of those Vietnam vets have that too.

Also in addition they have to deal with their post - traumatic stress disorder which I
think I have now.
I find my attention span very short, I tire easily and have a hard time concentrating on
anything.
What's more I can't take loud noises too well either.
A car alarm going off is enough to send me to into hiding or to run away reflexively.
But that came from my days on the deserted streets of Savannah and New Orleans.
Several times when the car alarm went off in some auto ( because of our stupidity) we
would be attacked by these hordes of zombies.
They would always be aroused by loud noises of various sorts, especially the sound of a car
alarm.
Also the whirring of a helicopter and the sound made by an aircraft can alert them to
you.
Which is why we really had to fight our way to get on them to escape.

Having come into contact with the infected ( or zombies ) has pretty much altered my
perception of other people in general.
Nowadays I tend to see others as potential zombies and that makes me want to distrust
them even more.
To begin with I have always distrusted others, long before the outbreak of the infection
began I was never the type that wanted to get too close to anyone to trust them.
My friendships tended to be few and not really deep, but rather very casual ones.
I'm a loner and a drifter without any real attachments to anyone or anyplace.
Which when I think about it makes me wonder how or why I ever got married in the first place.
I married some blonde bimbo who turned out to be a real gold digger, but as the old saying goes
" Like attracts like".
If I was female I probably would have been a gold digger myself, especially if I didn't know how
to gamble or con a few bucks off some suckers with shit for brains.
The marriage didn't last very long, as it turned out I was just as selfish as she was ( maybe more)
and just as materialistic.
What she saw in me was a big suitcase or bag with bundles of dollar bills rubber banded to-
gether, and with it what she thought was a generous heart ( or a feeble mind ), willing to give her
those rubber banded bundles in endless amounts without question.
What I saw in her was a pretty sexy looking face, shapely breasts, nice legs and a means to satis-
fy some sensual urges.

One thing I've notice now about myself is that I cannot stand to be in the middle of crowds or
among a large group of people.
I get this paranoid feeling that I might be surrounded by the infected and it makes me want to
get away to a place that's quiet and lonely.
A noisy partying crowd of people in a nightclub makes me very uneasy.
I can't help but think that the loud noise might attract the zombies and I find myself looking
out for them.
Years ago I remember going to a baseball game in a big stadium.
I was a teenager then and I went with my friend's family to see a major league
team playing against another.
The sound made by the roaring crowd of hundreds was almost deafening.
Now if I was at such a sporting event I would find myself holding my hands to my ears to
drown out the sound.
At the same time I would have to hold back the urge to flee and hide somewhere.
The sound of the roaring crowd would trigger memories of a zombie horde coming
after us .
I can still hear the growling roaring horde of the infected chasing us down deserted
streets and I can still see us shooting them down like so many wild animals.
The sound of a horde is something that never goes away or leaves you, especially
in your sleep.
If I live another two hundred years I don't think I'll ever forget it nor what we went
through.
Chances are I would still be dreaming about it too.

Also I still think about the others, that is my comrades who shared the horrors
and the hardships of day to day survival in a world infested with the in-
fected.
I refer to that situation and the times we shared as the "Zombie Holocaust".
For lack of a better term.
I hope all is well with Coach, Rochelle and Ellis.
Wherever they may be now I wish them the best of luck and hope that they're
making the best of it.
During the time when we were together we really formed a common bond that
wouldn't have been possible under any other circumstances.
Especially in safer situations where one could afford to do without reliance on
someone else for your basic survival.
I admit I do sometimes miss the cameraderie and it will probably be the only time in
my life where I ceased to be the loner that I originally was.
Mainly because I was in a situation where I had to rely on and trust others to get
through another day without dying.
The same thing happens to soldiers in war who find themselves living together and
having to rely on each other for their lives.
That's where the bonds of cameraderie are formed and tested to endurance.


I did remember telling them that I was coming down here to the Virgin Islands
to start a new chapter in my existence.
Told them to look me up if they ever came down here to get away from it all.
They may have gone to one of the islands in the Bahamas where the others were
evacuated to or that one place in Texas on the Gulf coast.
I forgot the name of it but it's one of the few places on the U.S. mainland that
wasn't hit by the infection and it's heavily fortified against it.
Also from what I've heard many survivors went to live in Costa Rica where even
before the zombie holocaust began there had been a community of American ex-
patriates living there.
Many of them retirees living in a place where it's more affordable to live on thier
retirement income and where they don't have to worry about cold weather freezing
their athritic joints.
The infection hasn't really hit the Caribbean as badly as the mainland U.S.
There have been a few reported outbreaks in Jamaica, some of the islands
in the Bahamas and one or two other islands in the area.
These were mainly among the Americans who had fled the mainland to seek
refuge in the islands.
From what I understand they were quickly taken care of by the local police and
military.
Here on the island of St. Croix the presence of the American military seems
rather all pervasive.
But then this is U.S. territory like Puerto Rico, where I also stayed for a brief
while before coming here.
No one is allowed into the island unless they have been thoroughly screened
and certified to be infection free as the locals would say.
There's even a t-shirt circulating around the island stating that with a smiling cartoon
character in straw hat, Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt holding a drink in his
hand.
Must have been made by the natives for the benefit of the recent arrivals from
the mainland.
People who would normally come down here as tourists are now like emigres or
refugees.
All of them like myself escaping the Zombie holocaust and it's aftermath.