Apple a Day
Member
I will preface this thread by saying that I have been debating with myself whether or not to post this information. I have kept a journal since I was a teenager and for me it's just a habit. If you were to thumb through them you might find some outlandish stuff. It's true, though. Since I have spent quite some time at THR and TFL over the last couple of years I feel enough comfort and even some obligation to share the events of the last couple of months.
This is not a "which gun to kill zombies" thread, but those discussions are part of the reason I am posting this. Most of you will take this as a joke or think I'm nuts but some of you who have actually seen such events may reconize it for the truth. I will leave the decision up to you.
Disclaimer: Nearly all of the information I am relaying in this entry has come to me second- or even third hand. I do count my sources as pretty reliable. I would count on minor details varying from other accounts that one might hear but I would have no cause to doubt the essential facts.
Begin Journal Entry
I am sitting down to record the events of the last couple of weeks on Sunday, 2nd of November, in the year 2003. I can't write all of this down in one sitting and, depending on what response I get, continue posting sections of the joural entry as I write them.
The first bit of the story came to me as I was chatting with a police officer who happens to live in the same townhouse complex as myself. There are seven cops in the complex at last count. I will not say exactly which one and I will call him “Harry†as a pseudonym. We ran into each other at the dumpster in the evening throwing out bags of trash. Harry looked a bit more tense than usual and I asked him what was bothering him. He replied that he was going to go on duty in a couple of hours and that since the day before all of the town’s police had been told to keep a special eye out for anything unusual. My first assumption was that he meant looting of houses, since this was right after hurricane Isabel had just torn through. Quite a large percentage of the area was still without power and some without phones. As usual, the hardest hit communities are those with older houses and nearer the water… the old, traditional watermen communities. Anyone hearing what might be someone breaking into their house might have no lights to see and no phone to call for assistance. Harry shook his head and pointed out the obvious, which I had overlooked, that those folks also tended to be hunters and shooters and therefore armed. They also tended to live close to friends and relatives, so help was no more than a shout away. Then he told me what another officer had sworn to seeing the night before:
The officer had been driving down towards Messick Point just after dusk. He wanted to keep an eye on things and discourage out-of-towners from sightseeing, driving around and taking pictures of the huge piles of sodden belongings and tree parts piled in peoples’ yards. As he cruised through one neighborhood he noticed someone shambling the other direction. The officer took him to be probably drunk, but wouldn’t have been the first person found after the storm so overwhelmed by the loss and destruction that they had just taken to walking around in aimless confusion. The officer called out to the man, who looked in pretty poor shape in the faded light. When the man ignored the officer and continued walking, the officer attempted to turn the car around and catch up to him going the other direction.
You have to keep in mind that in a neighborhood with narrower streets that would take several seconds. After a hurricane the streets looked like giant beaver settlements with lodges 6 to 7 feet high and dozens of feet long made from downed tree limbs and water-ruined belongings. Also remember that the power was out so that there were no street lights, no lights from the houses, no ambient light from the town. By the time the officer manage to find room to turn the car around and get back to where he saw the man, he was gone. Using his spotlight, the officer found no sign but a muddy suit coat, which may have been lost by the man or left out as ruined by the hurricane… and a rotted finger. It was the ring finger from the right hand of someone who had been dead for some time but still had enough flesh to hold a large ring onto it.
The officer bagged the finger and the coat, took them back to the station. I think they tossed the suit jacket after they searched the pocket and sent the finger to Richmond for fingerprinting and DNA testing. The ring was a class ring from Virginia Tech, had the class and name of a former military man who had died over the summer and been buried in a local cemetery. I didn’t find out that part until a week later when I ran into Harry again walking outside with his kids. Come to think of it, him walking with his kids was a little out of the ordinary; usually they have the run of the neighborhood, even after dark. I haven't seen them out in anything less that broad daylight for a while now.
The next episode happened a week and a half after the hurricane. I had stopped by Winfree’s, a local gun store up on highway 17 that I haunt once in a while. I wasn’t really shopping for anything, just stopping by to chat with the clerks and see how they came through the hurricane. Years ago the store was all about hunting and shooting, I am told. Nowadays the front half is jammed with cartons of cigarettes. Every time I come out I reek of tobacco, but you get used to it. In the rear section are the guns and ammo. There were also a few of the locals and “Ruthâ€, the clerk swapping stories of the hurricane and damage. Ruth is a good old girl, born and raised in the area. She’s got lots of hair, a big down-home smile, and a motherly way about her that she’d cultivated through at least three kids that she’s mentioned. We have kids near in age and as nice as she is, I have no doubt that when she warns,†don’t you make me come back there!†to her little ones in the car she means business.
She was chatting with two other gentlemen customers who were there, browsing and jawing. They all gave me uneasy glances when I walked back to the gun counter, as if I had walked into a conversation they weren’t sure they wanted to have in front of me. When Ruth called me by name the instant she saw me and gave the “he’s okay†look to the other guys, they relaxed visibly but started a new topic. After about half an hour they said their goodbyes, having run low on stories on hurricanes, construction, and such, leaving me with Ruth and a counter-full of goodies.
I asked Ruth to pull a .22 rifle off the rack behind her for me to look over and she started quizzing me about how much ammo I had at home. I danced around the subject a little, saying I had plenty to hold off a few looters, wasn’t worried about being attacked by the Chinese Red Army. She cocked an eyebrow and warned me that there were worse things than the Chinese… quite a few closer to home.
“What does that mean?â€
“ You live in Poquoson, don’t you?†she asked with that eyebrow hovering at a height that the director of Homeland Security would announce as “Orange Alertâ€. I nodded cautiously. She stared hard at me for a few long moments, waiting for me to have an epiphany, or maybe trying to gage if I am really as clueless as I appeared. “… but you’re not down by Messick are you? Well, you should be all right. Not a good idea to go sightseeing down there after dark. People get nervous and they have their reasons… especially lately. That hurricane must have done something.â€
Coming from anyone else and in any other tone I would have thought that “something†meant just a lot of physical damage to the houses. The hairs were standing on the back of my neck, though. Ruth wouldn’t come straight out and say what she meant, though… she is a local woman, through and through, and that’d just not how things are done. When I asked her directly what she had heard, Ruth cast a long look in the direction the two men had just left, then mumbled that some folks who had come in the shop had been talking about strange things… she had only caught bits and pieces.
She pointedly asked me if I had repaired my CZ-52 which I had bought from them and whose extractor had popped off at the shooting range. I had but hadn’t tested the new extractor, yet. It wasn't my first choice for home defense, anyway, to which she began quizzing what I DID keep handy and loaded... just in case I needed it suddenly.
Since the rumors subject was obviously dead, I wound up leaving the shop with a couple of boxes of rounds for the CZ-52, some shotgun shells, and some .357 magnum hollowpoints. I had been to Wal-Mart the day before and they were nearly out of all kids of ammunition. I thought it was because of a fear of looters and hunting season coming over the horizon. I didn’t put it together until later, after Ruth had nearly refused to let me leave without the shotgun shells and magnum hollowpoints.
More later
This is not a "which gun to kill zombies" thread, but those discussions are part of the reason I am posting this. Most of you will take this as a joke or think I'm nuts but some of you who have actually seen such events may reconize it for the truth. I will leave the decision up to you.
Disclaimer: Nearly all of the information I am relaying in this entry has come to me second- or even third hand. I do count my sources as pretty reliable. I would count on minor details varying from other accounts that one might hear but I would have no cause to doubt the essential facts.
Begin Journal Entry
I am sitting down to record the events of the last couple of weeks on Sunday, 2nd of November, in the year 2003. I can't write all of this down in one sitting and, depending on what response I get, continue posting sections of the joural entry as I write them.
The first bit of the story came to me as I was chatting with a police officer who happens to live in the same townhouse complex as myself. There are seven cops in the complex at last count. I will not say exactly which one and I will call him “Harry†as a pseudonym. We ran into each other at the dumpster in the evening throwing out bags of trash. Harry looked a bit more tense than usual and I asked him what was bothering him. He replied that he was going to go on duty in a couple of hours and that since the day before all of the town’s police had been told to keep a special eye out for anything unusual. My first assumption was that he meant looting of houses, since this was right after hurricane Isabel had just torn through. Quite a large percentage of the area was still without power and some without phones. As usual, the hardest hit communities are those with older houses and nearer the water… the old, traditional watermen communities. Anyone hearing what might be someone breaking into their house might have no lights to see and no phone to call for assistance. Harry shook his head and pointed out the obvious, which I had overlooked, that those folks also tended to be hunters and shooters and therefore armed. They also tended to live close to friends and relatives, so help was no more than a shout away. Then he told me what another officer had sworn to seeing the night before:
The officer had been driving down towards Messick Point just after dusk. He wanted to keep an eye on things and discourage out-of-towners from sightseeing, driving around and taking pictures of the huge piles of sodden belongings and tree parts piled in peoples’ yards. As he cruised through one neighborhood he noticed someone shambling the other direction. The officer took him to be probably drunk, but wouldn’t have been the first person found after the storm so overwhelmed by the loss and destruction that they had just taken to walking around in aimless confusion. The officer called out to the man, who looked in pretty poor shape in the faded light. When the man ignored the officer and continued walking, the officer attempted to turn the car around and catch up to him going the other direction.
You have to keep in mind that in a neighborhood with narrower streets that would take several seconds. After a hurricane the streets looked like giant beaver settlements with lodges 6 to 7 feet high and dozens of feet long made from downed tree limbs and water-ruined belongings. Also remember that the power was out so that there were no street lights, no lights from the houses, no ambient light from the town. By the time the officer manage to find room to turn the car around and get back to where he saw the man, he was gone. Using his spotlight, the officer found no sign but a muddy suit coat, which may have been lost by the man or left out as ruined by the hurricane… and a rotted finger. It was the ring finger from the right hand of someone who had been dead for some time but still had enough flesh to hold a large ring onto it.
The officer bagged the finger and the coat, took them back to the station. I think they tossed the suit jacket after they searched the pocket and sent the finger to Richmond for fingerprinting and DNA testing. The ring was a class ring from Virginia Tech, had the class and name of a former military man who had died over the summer and been buried in a local cemetery. I didn’t find out that part until a week later when I ran into Harry again walking outside with his kids. Come to think of it, him walking with his kids was a little out of the ordinary; usually they have the run of the neighborhood, even after dark. I haven't seen them out in anything less that broad daylight for a while now.
The next episode happened a week and a half after the hurricane. I had stopped by Winfree’s, a local gun store up on highway 17 that I haunt once in a while. I wasn’t really shopping for anything, just stopping by to chat with the clerks and see how they came through the hurricane. Years ago the store was all about hunting and shooting, I am told. Nowadays the front half is jammed with cartons of cigarettes. Every time I come out I reek of tobacco, but you get used to it. In the rear section are the guns and ammo. There were also a few of the locals and “Ruthâ€, the clerk swapping stories of the hurricane and damage. Ruth is a good old girl, born and raised in the area. She’s got lots of hair, a big down-home smile, and a motherly way about her that she’d cultivated through at least three kids that she’s mentioned. We have kids near in age and as nice as she is, I have no doubt that when she warns,†don’t you make me come back there!†to her little ones in the car she means business.
She was chatting with two other gentlemen customers who were there, browsing and jawing. They all gave me uneasy glances when I walked back to the gun counter, as if I had walked into a conversation they weren’t sure they wanted to have in front of me. When Ruth called me by name the instant she saw me and gave the “he’s okay†look to the other guys, they relaxed visibly but started a new topic. After about half an hour they said their goodbyes, having run low on stories on hurricanes, construction, and such, leaving me with Ruth and a counter-full of goodies.
I asked Ruth to pull a .22 rifle off the rack behind her for me to look over and she started quizzing me about how much ammo I had at home. I danced around the subject a little, saying I had plenty to hold off a few looters, wasn’t worried about being attacked by the Chinese Red Army. She cocked an eyebrow and warned me that there were worse things than the Chinese… quite a few closer to home.
“What does that mean?â€
“ You live in Poquoson, don’t you?†she asked with that eyebrow hovering at a height that the director of Homeland Security would announce as “Orange Alertâ€. I nodded cautiously. She stared hard at me for a few long moments, waiting for me to have an epiphany, or maybe trying to gage if I am really as clueless as I appeared. “… but you’re not down by Messick are you? Well, you should be all right. Not a good idea to go sightseeing down there after dark. People get nervous and they have their reasons… especially lately. That hurricane must have done something.â€
Coming from anyone else and in any other tone I would have thought that “something†meant just a lot of physical damage to the houses. The hairs were standing on the back of my neck, though. Ruth wouldn’t come straight out and say what she meant, though… she is a local woman, through and through, and that’d just not how things are done. When I asked her directly what she had heard, Ruth cast a long look in the direction the two men had just left, then mumbled that some folks who had come in the shop had been talking about strange things… she had only caught bits and pieces.
She pointedly asked me if I had repaired my CZ-52 which I had bought from them and whose extractor had popped off at the shooting range. I had but hadn’t tested the new extractor, yet. It wasn't my first choice for home defense, anyway, to which she began quizzing what I DID keep handy and loaded... just in case I needed it suddenly.
Since the rumors subject was obviously dead, I wound up leaving the shop with a couple of boxes of rounds for the CZ-52, some shotgun shells, and some .357 magnum hollowpoints. I had been to Wal-Mart the day before and they were nearly out of all kids of ammunition. I thought it was because of a fear of looters and hunting season coming over the horizon. I didn’t put it together until later, after Ruth had nearly refused to let me leave without the shotgun shells and magnum hollowpoints.
More later
