Nothing was the same after that. Nothing was the same before it, but, before my parents died, I had hope and I felt that there was still something I could do about this tragedy. After they were dead, there was only pain and despair. I started walking around without the mask, daring the infection to take me. I sought out zombies in numbers and even drew them to me. I was reckless to the point of madness, but I just would not die. I lay awake most nights and just wished that I could. The infection wouldn't take me either, though I'd been drooled upon, bled upon, clawed, and bitten. For a long while, I cursed my immunity. Yet, for all my self-loathing and despair, I couldn't kill myself. I wouldn't let the zombies kill me either. If they somehow managed to win—somehow managed to catch me off guard—I could accept that, but I would not give up. For reasons I still don't understand, I couldn't.
The days became weeks and the weeks began to blend together. As the days stretched out after the outbreak, my feeling of isolation grew. There was no one left in my town but me. I hadn't left my town since the outbreak, so I didn't know much of what had happened in the neighboring towns or even much of what had happened in the rest of the world. Within the first week, television channels had stopped broadcasting. People's individual efforts to share news using the internet became my only source of information on the outside world. By some miracle, a good portion of the internet continued to work. Many forums and even a few video sharing sites remained up and running. As long as someone could continue to get power to their home, they could communicate with other survivors. Some people must have made a great deal of effort to keep strategic banks of servers up and running. They'd found some sense of purpose in the face of this tragedy. I envied them that.
I tried to find my own sense of purpose to deal with the sense of solitude. I ended up developing a somewhat academic interest in the zombies. I studied their behavior and their movement. I looked for patterns so I could predict their reactions and the routes they would take to get from one place to another. If zombie behavior was predictable, then I might be able to forecast their movements and such. It would make survival easier for everyone. It was pointless. I found it much better to study the most effective ways to kill the bastards. I started by dissecting a few of the zombies I killed. I wanted to find out what the infection did to their organs and if it made some places more or less vulnerable. I found out a few things I didn't really want to know.
I shared my findings on the forums and continued to experiment with different ways of killing them. Some things were effective and others weren't. For example, stabbing a zombie through the heart is not very effective. They're invulnerable to pain and their circulatory system is a mess to begin with. Even with a hole in their heart, they are able to continue chasing you until their brain is almost completely shut down due to oxygen deprivation. Their brain basically has to die before they stop chasing you. At least, I think that's what causes it. This can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. It's much more effective to sever their spinal chord or destroy the parts of their brain that continue to function.
These academic ventures weren't enough to really make me feel like I had purpose. What good did it really do to kill all the zombies in my town? I was the only one who really benefited from it. Even sharing what I'd done with others didn't do much good. Most of them just tried to avoid the zombies at all cost. I was discouraged, but hope came in the form of the first television broadcast since the TV stations' initial shutdown.
Someone had somehow figured out an override and was broadcasting in a loop over quite a few different channels. The transmission could best be described as a documentary. A guy in California had begun gathering people at an old prison with stone walls that he claimed was safe from the zombies. He showed the work they were doing to make the place self-sustainable: he'd gathered farm equipment and was planting the fields, they had their own power plant generating electricity for them, and a nearby building that housed huge banks of servers. They had a well, defenses,a hospital, and a bit more. Things were organized. Together, people had a better chance of survival. Together, people had a better chance of rebuilding. Together, people had a better reason to.
The video served as a beacon, calling anyone, willing and able, to come and join in the efforts. Dozens had come already, but there was room enough for many more. I had to go. There was nothing left for me in my town but empty streets and hastily dug graves. I began preparing for my trip the day after the transmission began airing.
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