George, a transgender man, begins writing in a journal to stave off loneliness as he tries to survive in the zombie apocalypse. After he finds a stash of food, his paranoia only makes his loneliness more intense. When he runs into strangers he taunt...
When I was in college, I studied abroad in the Netherlands. One of the hardest parts was trying to think using the metric system. Sure there were several difficult things: being away from family and friends, riding my bike everywhere, navigating a city with unfamiliar street names. But I'd been mentally prepared for all that. The metric system, however, threw me for a loop. Like, I wasn't dumb, I knew that the whole world uses the metric system, but we don't here in America. And you don't realize how casually we talk in measurements until you are immersed in a country that uses ones you don't understand. Is a 40 kilometer per hour speed limit fast or slow? If I buy a kilogram of chicken, is that enough for dinner? If it's 30 degrees celsius outside, how am I supposed to dress? For an entire semester I had to recalibrate my brain.
Well, a similar recalibration process is required during the apocalypse.
When I walk through the woods, keeping an eye out for the walking dead, being careful about where I step so I don't trip on a tree root or slip on a loose rock, I cover only about 1-2 miles an hour. (That's around 3 kilometers an hour, if I remember correctly.) I can walk twice as fast on a paved surface, but there are also more dangers out in the open.
I've been studying the atlas that I found on the bookshelf, trying to get a better grasp of where I am and what is around me. God, I don't even remember the last time I had to use a paper atlas to navigate. Finding locations on a grid of letters and numbers, tracing my finger along the curved red lines of roads, trying to measure distance using scale. It makes me grateful that I learned how to drive in days before Google maps, back when everyone kept local maps in their glove compartments.
According to the atlas, the grocery store parking lot where I threw my phone is located about twelve miles away.
Somewhere twelve miles away, which once would have been only a half hour car ride each direction, is now a full-day trek that requires an overnight stay.
Jumping in a car to take an hour round-trip drive on a wild goose chase to find a dead and probably irreparably broken cell phone that was lost months and months ago would be a waste of time and resources. WALKING there would be just plain crazy.
Suicidal even.
But for some reason, that's not enough to stop me. I'm in the middle of packing my bag right now. I plan to leave first thing in the morning.
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DAY 28 (MORNING)
I guess I haven't done a good job with sticking to my "savings account" plan. Along with a rolled up blanket and raincoat, I've put a few more protein bars, a fresh canister of cashews, and a bag of dried apricots in my backpack. The empty spaces in the pantry are only growing bigger and I'm barely closer to figuring out a sustainable source of food-income. I haven't planted a garden. I haven't caught a rabbit. But at least I know the location of an apple tree and have a working prototype for a rabbit trap.
