melannen | (no subject)

Today's been a creepy sort of day - I've got the "am I the only one left alive" feeling I always get when there's been nothing to take me out of the house, and all afternoon the sky's been grumbling away - like it has for days - but not actually going all the way, just holding the tension.

Then the rain broke, for the first time in weeks.

And according to my flist, there's zombies.

... otherwise I probably wouldn't have heard about it until The Daily Show came on. Which is sad, but typical. I'm trying to imagine what Jon and the writers are thinking right now : I mean, people are dying, but *how* could they resist the temptation to play it for comedy? Actually, they're probably thinking 'brains!!'

... totally inappropriate humor, right, but that's how it runs. If anybody's already lost anyone - keep safe, everybody, and keep in touch. If lj goes down you know where else to look for me.

Anyway Mom's here with me, and Sister's been at work all day in her isolated bunker building so I hope she's pretty safe, and I haven't *heard* any bad news from anywhere else. I hope Aunt and Uncle and Cousin were somewhere they could stay away - we haven't heard, and they're supposed to get here tomorrow for a visit. It's been quiet on my street so far - no quieter than usual, but no screams and chainsaws either, so.

I just peered down the road, toward the old cemetary on the corner where they built the church. It's really old - the newest dates we saw were the '20s - it's a nice place to walk. Or, well, it was.

I think all the zombies there were too old to do much, though. There's a couple sodden looking lumps of sticks and rags in the road down there, like the rain washed away all the dust that was holding their bones together. I wonder if those bodies are keeping the others away, or if it's just that we're too far from a newer graveyard.

IfWhen it settles down in a few days I really want to go see if we can match bones with stones and do a little archeology to find out who was buried there, especially in all the unmarked graves down the hill.

Meanwhile I'm heading over to

enemy_anime's in a few minutes for movie night. Mom doesn't want me to go, but she's letting me, I think because she doesn't really believe in the zombies either. I need to get out of the house though, and I figure I'm just as safe there - probably safer; people there know how to make explosives and have lots of swords.

Go on with life and don't let them win, right? That's what I said six years ago, I'm sticking with it now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I kept expecting classes in College Park to be cancelled, but I'm stuck in boring computer class anyway, even though about a half-dozen students aren't here.

Today in the Engineering library was weird -- everyone on the reference desk spent the whole time checking CNN.com every five minutes, the same way we did when the Tech shooting was going on. College Park hasn't been hit as hard as New York yet (fewer people, I guess), but I here they're considering closing down the metro and stopping the metrobus in DC, because they don't want commuters carrying the infection in and out of the city.

The Pentagon and the Capitol are both sealed off, and according to my dad and sister, all US military bases are on lockdown, nobody in or out. They're both stuck on base at Pax and can't get home.

I'm glad

seanchai is already safe back at the apartment now that it's getting dark -- I'm a little woried about walking home from class at 9:00, though I'm not sure sunset will make much of a difference, since the zombies started coming out during the day, under full sun.

Oh, man, CP has a really weird relationship with cancelling classes for emergencies - they'll not do it, and then everyone will complain, and then for awhile they'll be trigger-happy, and then nothing. I remember when 9/11 happened, what campus was like, everybody huddled in doorways in the dorms tryin to get news - I still have a printout of the stripped-down Cnn.com crisis homepage. Be glad they didn't try to do any emergency stuff - they do it really badly; I was there for two different crises.

Oh, and it's the first Wendesday of the month, isn't it, so I bet everybody though when the emergency sirens when off that it was just the usual test! (Or did they even set them off? I always though that was kind of dumb.)

I bet they'll cancel classes tomorrow, though.

And I'm glad your people are safe; military bases should be okay. Although I wouldn't want to be in Arlington right now....

They sent a couple army units into Arlington this morning, with flamethrowers. I'm sure somebody's going to complain about disrespecting the dead, but with the way all the DC hospitals are filling up...

They're sending civilians casualties to Walter Reed now, because the Georgetown and Howard University hospitals are over-loaded. The hospital situation is turning into a real problem in D.C. -- Greater Southeast Community Hospital was over-crowded before the rising even started, just because it's a badly-maintained mess.

The Metro's been entirely shut down; the zombies like the tunnels too much, and there's rumors that they're using them to travel. They think that might be how they got across the Anacostia after the bridge was barricaded.

Things are still quiet (but not too quiet) here. I didn't even hear about what was going on until noon when I got home from picking strawberries and turned out my computer. Of course, by that time all hell had broken loose in the major centres, but we're pretty isolated here so it may be a while yet before we start to see the effects. I'm a little worried about my dad and brother who are working in Kelowna where the airport and the big highway to Vancouver are, and of course, I haven't been able to get in touch at all with my friends on the East coast and in the US, but I'm trying to keep it together and focus on my survival plans for when the worst inevitably happens. My family and friends are all stubborn and intelligent (although admittedly those nice shiny, spicy brains might be more of a liability than an advantage in this situation), so I'm sure they're more than capable of looking after themselves, wherever they are now.

Yeah - it must suck to be in one of the harder-hit areas, or if you got into trouble before you realized what was up, but I'm honestly not too worried right now - we have food and drink to hole up here for weeks if necessary, and it's not like they're that hard to take down, once you've realized what you're dealing with.

Of course, I may be eating my words later, but. I'm glad lj's still up or I'd probably be either a lot more worried or in a lot more trouble.

... (I always though Berkowitz was probably a zombie of some sort anyway!)