The following are excerpts from Henry Thayer's diary (one might call it a journal but it has a lot of Lisa Frank stickers on it and all....so..you know..), which chronicles his journey home to the burned out corpse that is a softballless DC.
For his previous adventures please visit
Part I and
Part II.
8:07 am EST
It all happened so fast -- like an eye that blinks a little bit quicker than a normal eye, like, on a hyper vigilant person, or someone with a facial tic -- it was all gone.
I, Henry Thayer, walked alone, through the city streets, like Bruce Springsteen in that video for "Philadelphia" or I probably walked that way, stopping to clutch chain link fences and stuff, because I had that song and video stuck in my head. But in reality it's much warmer out than it appears to be for Bruce in that video. Na-na na-na.
The thought of softball, also society, disappearing so fast, like that fast eye I talked about before, sends chills down my ass.
Everyone and everything I ever loved is gone, except me, my Miken Freak bat, and this trading card.
It's time to get movin, cause I don't wanna know what that sound is on the horizon...
9:58 am EST -- The Hollow Men
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. - Thomas Stearns Eliot
The sun seems to shine a little less today. Also my shades are on, cause sometimes I get light sensitivity, so that might have something to do with the less sun shining thing.
Meals are lonely. Every 30 miles or so on 95 there's a Crackerbarrel. I usually break in and make myself a Country Fried Steak and some Hashbrown Casserole.
I'm so alone. So very alone. So I get to eat all the biscuits without sharing.
Now I know what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote:
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.He was talking about when softball wipes its stitched self off the face of the earth, wasn't he? Wasn't he....
1:47 pm EST
After lunch I took a nap. I dreamed of her again. Not the old woman that was borderline copyright infringement from the Stand, but my first and only love....someone whose identity I probably won't reveal until later for more dramatic effect, even though this is a diary of my own personal thoughts and no one else will ever read it.
I remember how we used to laugh and play.
I remember the wry smiles, the soft punches to the arm, the sprinkler dancing.
I remember the time we picnicked on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower, drinking wine, eating gazpacho, sharing boisterous tales of love and loss and softball. Oh yeah, also there were horses for riding...and we had hula-hoops too. It was whimsical.
Everything smelled of sherry and Tahitian vanilla and leather, the kind of leather cowboys wear. Cowboy leather. Like a savory cowboy sundae. That's what love smells like sometimes.
The king of Paris looked down upon our checkered picnic blanket, from his mighty crystal throne atop the Eiffel Tower and wept a single tear, which was also crystal-like, mirroring his throne for literary effect.
"Those Americans," he cried. "They cannot cook bouillabaisse...but they love like...something that loves really well, as well as my wife makes bouillabaisse...like..a professional love sailor. Sailing on the seas of love, in a friend-ship. With an acquaintance-life-boat...for safety."
Aye-aye Capt.
Day 2: The Dayening.10:16 am EST
The zombies came for me at night. I've never seen so much blood -- it was like a river, of a size which I'd not yet witnessed, either. Like really seriously a big river. Like an ocean but with the potentiality for riverboats, and their gambling. That much blood. I also was wearing one of those white suits and black Mark Twainy/Colonel Sanders ties, which made me look a little like Mark Twain or Colonel Sanders. Probably more like the Colonel, because I was in a war. But that's probably why I mentioned the riverboats. They make me think of satire and chicken.
Anyway, there was a lot of BANG!- PING!- and KAPOW!-ing, as the sweetspot of my sidearm found their decayed jaw and groins. I piled the zombies up...into a pile..of zombies, and lit them afire. This was all before breakfast. OOOH! A WaffleHouse...
11:02 am EST
MMM..those were good waffles. Also, boysenberry syrup, FTW.
Anyway, back to reflecting. In the solitude of night, the darkness cupped me like a buttock, or a hand on a buttock, either way I was being cupped in the darkness. The stars powdered the sky like rouge on a hooker's blouse as I lie exhausted and covered in their undead wreckage.
4:07 pm EST
I penned the following letter, written in blood, but then in felt tip pen, because it was easier and more legible. Also sanitary. I placed it in a bottle and threw it in the Chester River, should anyone ever find it:
Dear Survivors. Stop.
Do you like softball?. Stop.
Theres zombies here. Stop.
The night is cupping me like a butt. Stop.
Also Im eating all the waffles. Its awesome. Stop.
I hope I find life soon. Alone, I fear I may not make it through the night. I find my mind drifting itself back to New York, back to home. I wonder if Tivo is still recording for me...Tonight is a Wednesday night. There is a "Friends" marathon on UPN. But they're all the ones after Ross and Rachel break up. Will I ever get home to see them? God be with me.
Oh, nevermind. I just found a hotel. It's only a Comfort Suites, but they have cable and A/C. It's time to rest my weary bones.
12:07 am EST
WTF. For real. The tvGuide channel says that from 12:00-2:30am, the SyFy Original monster/disaster movie "Epidemic: BatAids" is supposed to be on. But this is clearly still "Swamp Devil."
The world has clearly fallen apart....Should anyone find this diary...journal, you will find the world unrecognizable.
Day 3: Still Truckin'
8:06 am EST
Still kinda steaming over that SyFy thing...
Swamp Devil ≠ Epidemic: BatAids!
Also all the death and Kias are the only cars left on the roads and zombies and cannibalism. ...Yes, I've considered resorting to cannibalism. I mean I'm eating a scone from the continental breakfast bar, but if I were a scone...total cannibal. It's orange-cranberry. But it might as well be made of people. Things are that crazy here.
When I run out of these scones, I may not have a choice.
I might have to have a cinnamon one. And that's fucking gross.
10:22 am EST -- The Horsemen
"
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, 'Come!' I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." -- The Bible I think
There's nothing funny about apocalypse. Controlling 1/4 of the earth and owning horses, Death is like if China went on that My Super Sweet 16 show on mtv. And then killed everyone and set beasts upon their flesh. And then T-Pain performed when the cake came out and China cried that the Bentley horse wasn't the right color. Like, if he didn't want a pale horse. But like, candy apple red.
Things are quieter now. Like golf, but with more trashcan fires. The zombies around me live a lot like homeless people, except for the flesh cravings. I think, in the fallout of recent events, some zombies are evolving...gaining superhuman qualities. This one guy I saw, he had to be like...6 foot 4. And this lady zombie had a really big head. She must have mind powers.
Not all the mutations are positive. Some zombie ahead seems to have developed a painful reaction to sleeves. His denim jacket appears to have once had them, but he's torn them off. They are all frayed. The pain must have been excruciating.
Does the lord know no mercy? Are they not still his creatures?
Anyway I've just been hitting them with this bat the whole time I've been writing. They're not really attacking so much anymore but..you know...booooooriiing.
7:57 pm EST -- The Metaphor
The world is Jodie Foster's voice.
The world is Alphabets Cereal.
The world is Jewel Poetry.
The world is Ace of Cakes.
The world is Canadian Money.
The world is Chandler Bing.
The world.......... is jorts.
Day 4 -- The Coping
10:31 am EST (45 miles outside of DC)
It's totally time to move on! There are no limitations on the human spirit. But there are even less limitations on the robot spirit, because robots don't have spirits, they just run on electricity, or, to a lesser extent, gas, or maybe even nuclear power in the future. I've given up on that whole softball dream. It's time to start my life anew. So I built a robot out of old Waffle House and Kia parts and some other things. And then I built like 2 or three more.
I have enlisted robots to help, both with the cleanup and rebuilding, but also the spirit-boundary-lessness.
The robots look kinda like the one from Short Circuit, also Short Circuit 2...I mean the robot didn't really change, even after Steve Guttenberg left the franchise. But they also kinda look like those old Alphie the Alphabet Robots, but with less turtles and ice cream on their chests. That is not to say, however, that said robots are completely devoid of either turtles or ice cream.
The rebuilding isn't easy. Most of the buildings, almost all of them really, are still standing. So it's kind of hard to build buildings out of other buildings. We don't have many materials to use for construction. The few I had -- old vacuums , a stereo (from one of the cars), and an ironing board -- all went into building these rebuilding robots. The zombies were really angry about us ruining their cars and vacuums, but they'll change their collective tune when one of our robots plants an American flag on top of the giant pile of rubble we made when trying to move a building so we could use it to rebuild itself. They'll change their collective tune indeed.
Things are still tough here. There's a glimmer of hope on the horizon, but the rest of things, the world and its horizon, pretty much everything else besides that small hope glimmer, is darkness. Also one of the Zombies stole my hat last night....so there's that.
Day 5 -- The Discovery
9:35 am EST
I dreamed of her again. She was riding a dragon made of softballs and hope. Mostly softballs, as far as I could see...with hope being an ethereal construct and all. She wants me to continue my journey. I abandoned my robot friends and rejoined I-95. They were pretty terrible at everything anyway.
12:45 pm EST
Mordor, The Emerald City, The Great Valley from Land Before Time....none of these epic grails can compare to what I see on the horizon -- The Mad Hatter ...18th and M, the intersection of the civilized world.
I stand here now, twirling the mustache I'm pretty sure I still have, and writing in this tome. Questions swirl through my brain. Am I ready to take this final step? What will be on the other side of that door? And will I be prepared for what I find there?
.......also when will be the appropriate time to reveal my former love's identity? Probably in the last installment right? Yeah...probably.
Posts
