This is Day 4 of our time barricaded inside the Reason’s grocery store. The zombie infestation seems to grow every day. We look outside and the collection of these things staggering about…
I scarcely know where to begin. But we are trying to put things together. It is just very difficult with such limited information. I don’t really want to talk about Zero Hour yet. At least, that is what we are calling it. But this is my account of the events leading up to Zero Hour.
So the morning of Day 1, something had gone screwy. I just didn’t realize it at the time. I always wake up and turn on my local news to get the weather and the top stories. However, on that day, the four networks that run live broadcasts in the morning just had their station logos up. The channels that were just showing old reruns or syndicated programming were still up and running but there was no live news. NFL Network was running a recap of the draft. I guess in retrospect I should have flipped it over to FOX News or CNN but I didn’t think anything about it at the time. I mean it was strange but I didn’t really have time to think about it because I had to get to work. I certainly didn’t think it was a sign of the apocalypse.
I normally listen to the Big Mad Morning Show on 92.1 The Beat and I was getting a lot of static on my radio, like multiple stations were overlapping a single signal. So it was a lot of squelching and static. I had just made a new CD filled with some really cool music so rather than listen to a distorted signal, I just listened to my CD player instead of my radio during my 22-minute commute to work.
When I got to work at 7:00 a.m. that morning, people were complaining about their phones running slow. I still use an old school Xenon cellular telephone. It is not an iPhone or a Droid – one of those phones you can surf the web with. But some “techies” at the store live and breathe by their smart phones. All these phone geeks were complaining that they couldn’t log on to all their social networking sites. (Yes, we are not supposed to carry personal cell phones with us but everyone does. They just keep them on vibrate. You would be amazed at how many tweets and FB status updates are done while someone is pooping.)
No one could log into Facebook. Some of the guys were complaining about not being able to access the Twitter accounts. Now, I use Facebook but I don’t use Twitter because I am not important enough for anyone to follow so I cannot speak to that. But people didn’t know if the sites had been hacked or crashed or if it was a local thing. And if you tried to do searches on Google, it would either just spin endlessly or pull up that 404 error. (Don’t ask me what that even means.)
News organizations off the air, Twitter crashing, unable to see status changes on Facebook? I didn’t realize it at the time but, looking back on it now -- four days removed -- I realize how much trouble we were in.
As for right now, thankfully, I am lucky enough to have my son with me and he brought my laptop computer and my portable air card which has allowed me to connect to the internet. While Google is highly limited in their searches right now, I ran several blogs in the past – just personal sites so my family could see what I was up to, post movie reviews, talk about books or comics I was reading, or just philosophical thoughts in general. When I found that www.blogger.com was still active, I thought to create this blog that you are reading now in hope of contacting the outside world.
Earlier this year, it seemed like social networking was the best way to get the “on the ground” perspective of things like the revolutions in Egypt or the environmental disasters after the Japan earthquake. Everyone is talking about how social networking has changed the world and here it has collapsed. Is it because everyone is tweeting about zombies and the massive influx of tweets crashed the servers? Or did the government go in and seize control to keep all the information from getting out? I am not some right wing conspiracy nutbar but it stands to reason that if a massive viral outbreak occurred, the government would do everything possible to keep it covered up to avoid mass hysteria. We may never know if that is what has happened.
Nevertheless, this is why I am here. I am trying to contact the outside world because our CB broadcasts have seemed to have garnered no responses. (Yes we actually have a CB radio. Kids, ask your parents about it.) The cell network won’t connect and when you pick up a landline phone, I would say three times out of four you get this busy signal like the network is down. And if we are lucky enough to call out, no one answers the phone numbers that we dial.
We are still here. And while I hope that there is someone out there that can get us help or get us to a permanent safe zone, there is really only one person out there that I want to read this. Amy, if you are seeing this, if you have made it back to the house and you got the links or my emails, I have Alex. We are safe. We are at the store.
I hope that Tulsa is not a hot zone but I know that is where you were going. You could be driving into a hellscape. If you are at home, if you are reading this, go through Strang. Do not go through Adair. That route worked for Alex. He has your dad’s pickup. Please make it here if you can but take your time if it means getting to us safely.
I love you, honey. I hope you are still alive.
More soon…
