Finally got a signal

There is no point in pretending anymore, we’re fighting zombies.  Actual, real, zombies.  We’ve been climbing up into the Appalachians for the last few weeks.  We’ve seen a few groups headed north, and we’re heading supposedly towards Blue Ridge eventually, I guess.  It can’t be a good sign that different bands of survivors are running towards what the previous group was running from.  And we’ve picked up so many people now I’m not even sure where they all came from.  I think though, we left even more behind.  Those that couldn’t climb a few weeks ago I think are following us now, but now dead. 

I found a group of 3 people I try to stay near because they seem to know what they are doing.  One is a forest ranger, plus she’s attractive, one is a firefighter out of Jersey, and the other is a soldier from the 10th Mountain.  We all four have guns, but probably 46 rounds of ammo between all of us.  We never shoot unless a horde is right on top of us or standing in our way.  That only happened once so far, when six or seven of them stumbled up from the bushes on the hillside and got between us the group up ahead.  Six or seven and I think we shot at them for 20 minutes at near point blank range.  “Oh, shoot them in the head” sounds really easy until they are moving at you and you know that if they touch you, just freakin touch you, you’re dead.  

Anyway, I’ve wanted to ditch this laptop 3 times already, but Forest Ranger keeps convincing me to keep it.  She says we might be able to find others out there.  I know there was a group in Colorado for awhile, and I’ve seen posts from a guy in England and another in Washington state.  So I guess that means not just New York. 

On a sidenote, I never realized how cold the mountains got in November, and the two worst months haven’t even hit yet.  Fires attract them too, so those are mostly out until we find a place so steep they can’t follow us up it.  We thought we’d found one of those two days ago and we were wrong…

Gotta save battery power…

Everything is f-ed up

I’ve got to conserve battery power.  I’ve been lucky with electricity so far.

We haven’t seen a building in days that wasn’t either on fire or burnt up.  After I took this pic someone started yelling at me to get the hell away from the water.  I saw something moving in it and everyone with guns started shooting in the water.  I didn’t see what we were aiming at, but a lot of blood came up.  Some guys showed up with more ammo, but we only have enough food for about one crappy meal a day now.  I know I was kidding about zombies before, but, there are people who actually believe that.  Like, we’re running from real zombies.  I think I might have seen a face or two under that water, but I don’t know if that’s just me dreaming stuff up to go with these crazy stories.   

We’re hiding in basements

We’re up ahead of the main group, hiding in basements.  There are really creepy sounds coming out of the woods.  And screams.  I’ve never heard so many screams.  I have no idea what is going on. 

 

New York is in flames

  I don’t even know where the Armory is any more.  Just one day it was surrounded by all these people yelling at us, demanding we do something, and we shut the doors and locked them and locked and loaded and we waited to see if they were going to riot or not.  People were pouring out of The City by the thousands, or more, some said tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. 

They were camped out in the streets, trying to steel our food and our guns.  We shot a few rounds into the door and they backed off for awhile.  I think we hit someone.  OK I’m sure we hit someone.  Don’t know what happened to him though. 

Finally somebody drove a truck through the big metal sliding door and nearly ran Smitty over.  We didn’t shoot this time, and they told us if we were willing to fight with them they would rather have us than kill us.  I had no idea what they were talking about but what they hell, why not? 

I kept our little group together, although everyone who saw we had guns kept trying to push us to the front.  Nobody could tell me who it was we were supposed to be fighting.  

Then the whole front half of the crowd started screaming bloody murder and running in every direction.  They had run into a wall of people, infected sickly people, in front of us.  Seriously like a zombie movie or something.  And these people were crazy.  We shot at some of them and it didn’t hardly slow them down.  I think I saw a few of them catch some woman, and she went down under a group of them screaming with them clawing and scratching her.  I don’t know what was wrong with those people, maybe they were starved or just insane, but they scared the crap out of about 10,000 people and they didn’t even have any guns. 

We ran into the woods and ran and kept running until way passed dark when so many people were falling and tripping over things that someone yelled for us to stop.  Everyone voted either me and my guys take up guard duty or give up the guns.  Thompson gave his up and stripped off his uniform top right there.  Smitty and I stayed together and the others rotated with us.  I’ve only got about 13 rounds of ammo…

WTH?

This is crazy.  We’re on 24-hour rotation now, just sitting in the armory in teams of 2 watching our own doors.  The riots haven’t gotten this far north yet, but there has been a constant stream of people heading north for the last two days.  But we also had a group of very angry people show up asking us what we were doing to protect their neighborhood.  They kept screaming stuff about the people on the Parkway getting out and stealing stuff and what the hell were they paying us far and all sorts of crap like that.  I sent emails and left messages to HQ about it, but they didn’t respond.  Smitty’s telling me they are actually shooting rioters at Fort Drum, and that a bunch of soldiers have gone AWOL.  They are doing accountability formations every 2 hours now and they are all carrying weapons too.  OK, this isn’t funny any more.  All sorts of folks are going to get fired over this one.

Enough riots already

I understand an afternoon of riots, but how long are these going to go on?  What is this Day 3?  Day 4? 

Orangeburg is completely calm, but all the news is covering are the riots, and they just seem to be getting worse.  It looks like the cops gave up on basic riot control and are now attempting to barricade the streets.  They sent a group email to all the little guard groups they spread out after the plane crash telling us to stay in our armories and keep our weapons loaded.  They also re-emphasized that we should have our NBC masks on us at all times.  I guess that’s for anyone near the riots in case someone has to throw tear gas. 

Smitty says he has a brother in Fort Drum who called him and says the riots have even spread there, although, it started with hospital workers he said.  Well, I suspect they will handle things differently on Fort Drum than they will in NYC.

I just got a call that I need to be on standby for possible riot activity.  I mocked them of course until I saw a little of it on some news webpages.  They’re saying these are class riots — all started with homeless marching and protesting and the first time cops got involved it turned ugly real quick.  Anyway, it is all in The City, and I’m Orangeburg, AKA Whiteburg, where the average house costs ten or twelve times my yearly salary, so I don’t think we’ll be seeing any sort of poor people riots up here. 

Still, SOMEbody must think we might ’cause they issued us rifles and two magazines of ammo today.  Naturally they made us put tape across the ammo in the magazine and told us not to lock and load or take them outside the armory, but still.  Now we have to actually keep track of our weapons and they don’t have a vault here.  I think that means we’re supposed to do 24-hour ops, but I think I’m just gonna tell the guys to sleep with their rifles in their sleeping bags. 

Oh and I’ve been sending Smitty out on burger runs so we aren’t just eating MREs all day long.  I used to hate all that fast crap, but compared to an MRE, not so bad. 

Armed with automatic weapons and bored.  That can’t end well.

Seriously?

Being the sergeant here, I’m actually the rankin-est guy, so I’m in charge.  Today a truck came by with MOPP Gear (protective suits and masks for NBC stuff, nuke, bio, chem) and dropped a box of it off.  Didn’t get all our sizes right either.  They said we needed them in case we had to go do more looking for plane crash survivors because a bunch of toxic stuff got released in the water and along the shores. 

Really?  Seriously?  Who comes up with this stuff?  It’s in the 80’s outside and they want me to lounge around in a charcoal lined suit. 

Well, that box is sitting right where it is until I see a mushroom cloud rising over the horizon.

So this is how a blog works

I was going to write a blog from Tikrit Iraq, but I just never started it.  I was going to write a blog as soon as I got back from Iraq, but kept getting distracted there too.  I’m sure if they’d have blogs in Desert Storm I would have whined about not blogging there too.  So now I’m finally starting it from this new lame mission, but at least it’s a start.  Anyway, you’re reading the blog of SGT Quinton Jackson — and no I’m not related to the kick-boxer.  And before you do the math, yes I’ve been in 19 years and I’m still an E-5.  It MIGHT have had something to do with the M203 grenade I shot at the wooden latrine in Saudi back in 91, or it POSSIBLY might have been related to the porta-potty I set on fire in Tikrit in 2005.  I’m not sure if that means I have a problem with authority or crappers. 

Anyway, after Iraq, I used my re-up money to buy this laptop.  Two extra long batteries and a built in cellurlar modem, I’m never going to end up stuck on a tarmac waiting for a plane for 6 hours with nothing to do again. 

Which brings me to this mission.  It started after that plane crashed last week in the sound north of Long Island.  First they called us up to help search the shores for survivors.  We were living out of tents for three days.  Fort Drum had like half a helicopter brigade down searching all over the place.  Supposedly they found either some bodies or people I don’t know.  Anyway, now they moved me and 6 other random dudes up to an armory in someplace I’ve never heard of called Orangeburg.  No sign of anybody in charge, just a “stay here until we get back to you” sort of mission and — I’m not kidding — a stack of MRE boxes and bottled water. 

Hence the blog. 

Somethings are just too stupid not to blog about.  Unbelievable.  I’ll let you know what clever idea they come up with next. 

–Quin