The situation is causing the world to start unravelling at the seams. The looting and the rioting in the urban areas both big and small are shameful and it’s the last thing that anyone needs to be doing. Society needs to hold it together at a time like this. To come together. To fight for the will to survive. No one is going to need a bigger TV when the cable goes out, when there is no electricity being delivered to paying customers. This is not a vacation from your old life…

Something more horrific than you can even imagine is coming down the pike toward you and if you’re not already running they will catch you. We’ve been travelling through Oklahoma most recently and have come across more pockets of the Undead clogging the arteries feeding the cities. We try our best to dispatch them without getting bogged down but too large a group puts our survival at risk. We could easily be overtaken and swallowed by a larger group; the potential for them to overturn our truck is high. Now we just drive through them, over them and around them as best and as fast as we can; hoping of course that we don’t run out of gas in the middle of a particularly large group. The truck is getting a little beat up but I made sure that the tires were strong and durable and that the body of the vehicle was solid before choosing it. Being a 4×4 helps a bit too… You never know when you’ll need a little off-road or over-Undead action. Perhaps the post-apocalyptic GM or Jeep advert should highlight that requisite safety feature.

It was while driving through Clinton, Oklahoma that we witnessed the strangest thing. I guess in times of severe stress and confusion, where there are no easy or readily available answers, people turn to reason. But not the kind of reason that is reasonable, logical, or even sane for lack of a better word. When we saw them on the street we must have stopped the car and sat there looking at them for at least a half hour. Just watching with incredulous looks on our faces, not knowing what to say to each other. Starting a word or a sentence and then letting it trail off. Sometimes there are just no words to describe what cannot be adequately described. I will however attempt to put into words what we saw today only because you may need to know what not to do.

At what point to people actually pass from just being stupidly informed to being actually stupid. I do understand the mob mentality. It happens in all kinds of situations and I’ve seen it’s after-effects in my morgue. But this was just insanity in its purest form.

They stood on the street corner with their signs and page boards. Dressed in their Sunday best, some holding their bibles high as if in protest. Their countenances almost defiant in their hatred of the Undead. For a moment, you could almost laugh at the stupid singularity of their message. They carried signs that we almost hilarious in their injudiciousness. Signs that read:

Go Back to Hell!

Undead is NOT a Life

Just Die! AGAIN!

The World Cannot Support the Existentially Challenged

Why Don’t You All Just Biodegrade Away?

They were set up on the street. No protection. No guns. Just the signs. A good old fashioned protest. Like that was going to save the world.

When the Undead found them, they tried shouting at them to go back to Hell. The thing about the Undead is that their only genetic instruction is to assimilate. Did they really think that the Undead would just suddenly fall to ground in an outward wave of yielding death? That their pleas would be the ones heard and answered because they had made some trivial signs? Stupid, misguided people.

Instead they died. Converted into the very things that they were cursing. Irony is cruel sometimes.

Initially our plan was to keep heading south and we’re going to try to do that as long as possible. So far there have been no reports of the Undead south of us. That is promising but we know that it will only be a matter of time before the infection spreads there as well.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re on a fool’s errand. Are we running for nothing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thinking about giving up. I just wonder if we should have holed up in a secure building or area and waited to see what type of world we would have to live in. Maybe a sedentary lifestyle would have been a better choice. Or even nomadic to a certain degree. Rotating around between safe areas, just trying to stay a little bit ahead. I think in our haste to get out, we didn’t consider any of these options.

When we were planning for something like this we have investigated and discussed many options. Each one had its advantages and its disadvantages. In the end we really didn’t come up with a solid plan. Everything was still technically up in the air as there were so many factors and unknowns to consider.

And then our city, our home became the epicentre of all of this. To be honest, I don’t think we ever considered Toronto as the epicentre. In our minds, we had all assumed that it would probably start somewhere in the US or overseas, if it started at all. Just having the Undead so close to us that point less than 2 weeks ago, made the decision that we would have to leave. We hastily came up with a plan to move away from the hot seat and see if we could find. We were hoping for a highly effective militarized response.

Unfortunately all we’ve seen is death and now destruction. Why does crisis bring out the worst in some people?

We hope that everyone reading this is safe or at least on the move to get somewhere safe. Please do not wait until it’s too late and for heaven’s sake, don’t do anything stupid. The last thing the world needs right now is more of them. Choose Life.

The Next Day