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Zombie Outbreak - Rose MacBeth Journal

Rose MacBeth, Estes Park, CO

I figured I would start this journal to keep a record of life after the zombie apocalypse. My name is Rose and I live in the Colorado mountain town of Estes Park.

I remember the day it happened. It started out in Denver at first and we thought it was just some epidemic that would get sorted out soon enough. Then we saw the reports coming in from all over south Colorado. Zombies, the living dead, a virus that couldn’t be controlled. It was like a nightmare. But we had this false sense of security living up in the mountains. Surely zombies wouldn’t come this far? But it wasn’t the zombies we had to worry about. It was the people, the ones carrying bitten loved ones trying to escape. They brought the zombies closer to us.

We figured we would be safe here, living so high up in the mountains. We had a natural water supply, the Big Thompson River, running down from the peaks, plenty of wild game and vegetation too. We could survive a zombie apocalypse! And we did…for a few weeks.

It was a young guy named Craig who ducked out to find his girlfriend that broke that sense of security. He was gone for a couple of days. When we asked him where he had been he told us hunting. I didn’t believe him though. There was something about his shifty eyes that set off alarm bells for me. I told the colonel I thought something was up. He agreed but said we should just keep an eye out. The colonel is ex-military, a survivalist and like a granddad to us all here.

A few nights after that I got woken up by screaming. I hit the ground running, grabbing my rifle as I passed through the door. It took me a minute to realize I was freezing my butt off and had come outside in shorts and a t-shirt. But that was the least of my worries. A few feet up the road I saw Craig lying in the street. As I got closer I saw that he had wounds that would be impossible to survive. I thought it may have been a bear attack or something, even though something was telling me the reality was a zombie attack. That’s when I heard this screeching sound behind me. I whipped around in time to see this mangled corpse flying at me and then it hit the ground, head exploding everywhere. It was a zombie and the colonel had managed to save my skin.

I remember him walking over to me and saw a small crowd was gathering. We turned to look at Craig and saw that he was still twitching. The zombie we just shot was his girlfriend, the one he went to find a few days before. She had been bitten and he brought her into our safe zone. And now he had been bitten too. Before we put him out of his misery he managed to say one last thing, “They’re already in the forest…they’re everywhere...”

We got a bit more vigilant after that episode. No one in or out without clearing it first with the group leaders. It’s been two months since the zombie apocalypse began. We’ve set up barricades around the water sources, just below our town. We didn’t want to run the risk of zombies traipsing through the streams upwind of us and contaminating our supply. Our main goal is to keep them all south of us. Sentries have been posted in the vulnerable areas, where zombies could get through. Craig wasn’t lying either. They were in the woods and seemed to be growing in numbers.

We all moved ourselves into the main town area as well, except for one or two stubborn people who insisted they would stay in their cabins. In any case, they are acting as look outs and send us daily reports via walkie talkies.

I keep wondering how we will survive once the winter sets in. Even in the summer Estes Park can get snow. And we are hearing less and less from others that we had been in contact with in other parts of the state. There was a group gathering in Fort Collins where an old military base had been. We had been talking about getting down there if things went to hell here. But we lost contact with them a week ago and no one knows what has become of them. Were they overrun by a zombie hoard or did they just decide to keep to themselves at this point? Who knows?

Well, it’s time for my watch tonight. Me, Meryl, Jess and old Boomer, one of the town’s watch dogs, are out at the south lookout point. We’re just about to have a nice meal of rations.

Something’s wrong! Sat down to eat and then it started. We’re hearing strange noises coming west of our location. I’ve contacted our headquarters and they are sending some backup. We’ve been told to retreat back a ways. If it’s what I feared, then these zombies are getting too close for comfort now. I just hope backup gets here before they do.