Zombies in the Suburbs; Entry Five

I didn't even notice the smoke when I visited my neighbor's house, two or three days ago. After three or four weeks inside, smelling the smoke even inside the house, I guess I just got used to it. But today, it is so thick it looks like fog. I can't even see across the street, and I wouldn't go outside right now for anything. You wouldn't see or hear any infected until they were all over you. There could be fifty of them within a block of my house, but I wouldn't know it. God knows what is in the smoke, but I'm sure my lungs are full of all sorts of crap that will kill me eventually. I would like to live long enough to see 'eventually', and I know a lot of other folks wont. Thousands -- millions? -- have already succumbed to the virus, been killed in rioting or fires, or some other shitty mishap. So I won't bitch too much about some phlegm and a hacking couch.

The lack of reanimated infected (zombies still sounds too weird) has me perplexed. Our home town has twenty thousand souls, or did. It strikes me as odd that there aren't more zombies, or even survivors visible. A few thoughts have occurred to me as to explain why there aren't more around. Some of them give me hope that I might make a go of it, while other factors could be problematic sooner or later.

First, our town is a peninsula, surrounded by ocean on three sides. For all intents and purposes, there isn't much reason to come here. There are only five roads into town, one of which is over a bridge. It is conceivable that those roads are jammed with cars, and with densely packed houses in town and in the neighboring communities, it might be hard or even impossible for the infected to navigate very far, penned in by debris, wrecks, downed trees, or other impediments. The second thing that might be keeping numbers down is the fires. At first I thought smoke might have been coming all the way from Boston, Winthrop, Chelsea, and other areas with lots of industry, oil facilities, and very densely built areas. But we are pretty far from the big city areas, so I'm thinking the smoke might be from closer neighborhoods, creating almost a fire break. Which would be great, unless the winds push the fires to the coast, or eventually burn out. At that point, nothing will be in the way of hordes of the infected seeking out fresh meat. And if I have to move from my lair, going west will take me into burn areas, and finding food, water, and shelter would be downright impossible.

All of this thinking about fire and smoke has me edgy. First, my house is sided with wood clapboards, so it'll burn easy and fast. A brick or stone structure would be safer, and it would be easy enough to make secure against large groups of reanimated, assuming that they will eventually make for this area. I sort of think they will, and I should -- if I can -- find another safe house that I can stock and secure. I may not have a lot of time to move, and I'd like to have a back-up. There is a brick church just on the other side of the main street -- fifty yards or so -- and it would be worth a trip to see if it can be secured. Something to think about.

Anyway, plenty of water and canned food to last a few weeks, or longer if the water pressure remains solid. The town water supply is in a huge tower at the highest place in town, so I might catch a break there, or at least for awhile. I need all the breaks I can get. One mistake or bad break, and I could be in deep shit. Well, I'm in deep shit now, but you know what I mean.