Fiction.

The old man’s room stunk like a nursing home. Arthur, the cat, had taken just about a million dumps in various corners of the room which added nicely to the smell. Amelia’s dad sat in an ancient orange recliner staring vacantly at a TV mounted to the wall above his head.

“Hey seriously! Leave my dad out of this he hasn’t done anything, literally.” Amelia was gesturing wildly and her voice was getting louder.

“Amelia. I don’t care. A fucking super villain bum told me to ask you about your dad. Since you’ve refused to tell me anything at all I’m going to ask him myself. Now you can shut up or I’ll have Lauren melt your lips together.”

The lights flickered.

“Hey old man I need to talk to you. What do you know about Jack Arrow?”

He glanced over my shoulder at Amelia, who was clenching her teeth and her fists. He looked like someone had just killed Arthur.

“Hey! Answer my question asshole.”

Ok, maybe calling a stinky old man an asshole was crossing the line; apparently Amelia thought so. She charged across the room and swung at me with a right hook that burned with light and caught me in the jaw.

“Whoa you crazy bitch!”

“DON’T YOU ASK HIM ANY QUESTIONS. DON’T YOU DARE!” She swung at me again, and I could see the veins in her forearms glow and pulse orange.

“JAMES! Get her away from me quick, she’s gone ass-crazy!”

James closed his eyes, and Amelia stopped trying to beat my face in with her glowing fists long enough for James and I to tackle her into the bathroom and quickly shut the door. Without anyone asking her to Lauren changed the doorknob on the door into a tiny bust of Bill Clinton.

“My friends are dead. I want to know why.” she said with a shrug.

I rubbed my jaw and turned back to the old dude. Amelia banged on the door and shouted some choice expletives at me.

“What do you know about Jack Arrow?”

He turned his eyes from the TV and looked at me square in the face: “I know that he is on his way here right now to kill you.”

No one could say anything. The sound of breaking glass came from the bathroom along with a muffled “FUCKERS!” and some more banging.

Lauren took a step forward. She had a crazy look on her face.

“Uh, Lauren … ”

“You are going to tell me everything you know about what is going on, and you are going to tell me right now.” She took off her shirt and began twisting it into a tight coil. James leaned over and whispered “I swear I didn’t make her do that. Plus I would have had her take that off that wife beater too. You know I would have dude!”

“Lauren what are you doing?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing Kaiser. I’m going to figure out why everyone we know is dead. Why a seemingly invincible vagrant named Jack Arrow is trying to kill us. This worthless old man knows something and I’m going to make him tell us.”

Loud, vaguely mammalian, screeches came from behind the bathroom door. With each concussion the door rattled on its hinges, and the little bust of Bill Clinton seemed to nod in approval.

The old man seemed in no hurry to go anywhere and didn’t move as Lauren whipped the coiled shirt at his chest. It unraveled and wove itself into a large hempen rope tying him to the chair. James said “Nice trick Tits! Why don’t you use your undershirt to make him some handcuffs?”

Then I punched the old guy, a helpless old guy tied to a chair, right in the nuts.

I spun around to face James. “Listen asshole that was uncalled for. Kindly remove yourself from my brain.”

“Hey man, just trying to get you in the spirit of things.”

The three of us — Lauren, James and myself — stood over the shriveled man, not knowing what where we should take things next. The man looked up and sighed a broken sigh.

“Fine. I am tired, very tired.” He paused and sighed again. “Haven’t you noticed what she does?”

The screaming and banging in the bathroom abruptly stopped. There were two small pings as the hinge pins fell out of the door and onto the tile floor. With a small thud the door landed on the ground. Amelia stood in the doorway lit from behind by crackling blue electricity leaping out of the light fixtures.

She pointed at her father. He put his head down and asked, “I guess it is my turn now?”

Amelia howled and the television mounted above his head creaked and fell from its mount. He looked up as the tube smashed into his face obliterating it. Electricity coursed through his body causing his muscles to spasm and spittle to fly from his mouth. Blood flowed down his chin as he bit through his tongue.

He hunched forward dead, the TV fell to the ground, and it was over.

Still totally wtf over what just happened we all spun around as we heard someone climbing up the stairs.

“Hola bitches — as someone once said.” sneered Jack Arrow as the lights cut off.

They all thought she was dead. It was a pretty reasonable assumption actually. Not many people survive being tied up while an historic theatre burns down around you. But I knew Diana was alive. I knew the same way I knew the bum, who went by Jack Arrow apparently, was still alive: I could see them, like a hazy dream, running through alleys in The Fan.

“I’m going after them.” I declared as the last wall of the Byrd Theatre crumbled to the ground. The sound echoed over the rooftops.

“Kaiser, they are both dead. You need to accept it.” Lauren slipped her arm around my waist as she tried to console me. I shrugged it off and started to pace around the rooftop.

“I can see them! They are still alive, I know it.” I started back down the fire escape.

Lauren and Amelia exchanged a worried glance. Lauren ran over to Amelia, gave her a quick hug, and headed after me down the stairs.

“Well what am I supposed to do here by myself?” asked Amelia.

“I dunno, make some shit glitter or something.”

We hit street level, and I took off running down Boulevard. As we ran I saw flashes of Arrow dragging Diana past some shady looking character including a hefty black man wearing a miniskirt and a mesh tank top. There was only one spot in The Fan were you could find a manstitute like that, and I knew just where it was.

We made great time towards Grace and Allen. Just as we were about to round the corner Lauren yelled out “Wait a sec!” She hurried over to the nearest tree and began yanking off all of the branches. Once she had a handful she held them out in front of her.

“What are you doing? I could think of a better time to take up gardening.”

“No, asshole.” She rolled her eyes as the tree limbs made an audible pop and were replaced with a wooden baseball bat.

“I thought you might want this?” she said handing the bat over to me.

“Lauren, I could kiss you!” I snatched the bat and ran around the corner.

I could smell the smoke as soon as I turned the corner. All around the Robert E. Lee monument cars had wrecked and were on fire. Several people had crawled out of the burning wreckage either to die or fall asleep. The entire city seemed not to notice or care. Arrow was sitting on the steps of the monument with Diana. She was fast asleep her head on his lap.

“Kaiser!” he shouted, “I have something you might want.”

“I have something for you too asshole.” I said as I pointed the bat at him and immediately felt like a total badass. I crossed the roundabout with Lauren and picked our way through the wreckage. Lauren stooped down to pick up a stray car antennae and brandished it menacingly.

“Aren’t you going to turn that into something more useful?” Arrow laughed.

Lauren said nothing but pointed her antennae at the massive weeping wound on his head where the steel plate was/had been and smiled. Jack Arrow frowned.

I was beginning to like Lauren, and it wasn’t because she had a nice rack, or because her sweaty t-shirt was plastered all over said rack. Lauren was an underrated badass if push came to shove — which I liked. But this was a completely inappropriate time to be looking at her tits.

Just as we reached the center of the roundabout that terrible sleepiness that was becoming all too familiar hit us like a humid day. I took two steps forward and stumbled to my knees. Lauren didn’t even make it that far. Clutching the bat desperately I looked up at Diana. She looked so peaceful.

Arrow stood up and gently laid Diana’s head down on the step. My eyes felt like fat Starr Jones was standing on them. He knelt down over me as blood dripped from his head wound onto my face. The monument began to fade in and out.

“I’m not going to kill you or your sister Kaiser. I’m not even going to kill Lauren — although I should for that little trick with the plate in my head. You know I got a Purple Heart for that? Anyway, I’m not going to kill you. At least not today.”

“I’m just going to give you a little advice.”

My eyes closed and I felt Arrow’s breath in my ear.

“Ask her about her father.”

I watched Lauren stomp off into the night as porch railings turned to gold, acorns popped into soap bubbles, and oak leaves puffed into sand and fell to the ground. Amelia sighed as if too tired to deal with any new drama. James pointed after Lauren and began thrusting in her general direction. Both of them seemed OK with letting her wander off, by herself, with a crazed lunatic sleep inducing bum/supervillain out to get us.

I shot a frustrated glance at the two of them and took off after Lauren. As I grabbed her elbow images flooded into my mind.

Something about my power had leveled up a notch during the most recent encounter with our mysterious, yet smelly, adversary. The first time I encountered him I was able to see some incomplete information about his past. During the second encounter I vividly saw some gruesome torture sessions he participated in during the Gulf War … and something even more terrifying.

Lauren’s images weren’t terrifying or gruesome. A picture of her gluing macaroni onto some paper with her mother whizzed past followed by Lauren crying while Amelia tried to comfort her. Then I saw a hazy image of Lauren, neck extended and lips parted, reaching up to kiss … me!?

“HELLO? Hey asshole, are you just going to stare at me, or did you have something to say?”

Like, whoa? I was pretty sure I’d never made out with this chick before. “Um, yeah. Hey! Don’t go.” I stuttered as I shook the sand out of my hair. Lauren flushed.

“We’ll I’m going. Someone’s got to do something!” she said.

“Lauren, look. You aren’t going to stop this guy by yourself. We’ve got to work together. God that sounds cheesy, I know. But it’s true. Without the rest of us you’d just be some severed head at this point.” Lauren grimaced and rubbed the nasty red mark on her neck.

“Come back to the house,” I suggested, “we can come up with a plan.”

She sighed resignedly. “I just want to do something. I’ve never done anything my whole entire boring life. Here is a chance for me to really do something that has meaning, and I’m going to do it.” She turned to head back to the house.

I put my arm around her shoulder as we walked back.

“Get your arm off of me.” She paused. “Asshole.”

Back in the house James and Amelia were on the couch watching a local news anchor drone on about a chemical plant explosion in Hopewell: twenty-two dead. Could things get any worse around here?

“So Tits, you’ve decided to come back to us?” James said as he eyed Lauren’s chest. “We are so glad to have you and your rack on our side again.”

Amelia gave James a quick kick in the shin and stood up. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do now. We certainly can’t stay here now that that guy has been here. Maybe we should …”

I interrupted her “I think we need to go to Diana’s house. Like right now.”

“Who?” asked Amelia.

“His whiny bitch of a sister.” answered James.

“I saw him … ” I staggered — just now fully remembering what I had seen — and grabbed the back of the couch for support. “I saw him killing Diana. But it was hazy, not like the other stuff I saw. I don’t know what’s going on but we need to get over there.”

Even James looked concerned for a second before he started scratching his balls. “Well, lets go then.” He stood up and walked out the door. “OK, we go then!” said Amelia.

The ride to Diana’s was long. It didn’t help that Amelia, while she could pull a mean parking job, was probably the worst driver in the world. It didn’t matter though. I couldn’t stop replaying what I had seen: Diana laying tied to a bed with her legs sawed off above the knee.

I rushed up the stairs to Diana’s apartment and banged on the door. “Diana? Diana! ARE YOU THERE? It’s Kaiser! Open up. PLEASE!”

The door swung open to reveal a very much bipedal, yet thoroughly bedraggled, Diana. “Oh god you are here. And you can walk!” I rushed in, picked her up in my arms, and swung her around. My mind was filled with images of our childhood together: playing in a sandbox on West Avenue, jumping off of the pedestrian bridge at Belle Isle into the River, and eating lunch together on the capitol lawn.

“Kaiser, what in the world are you doing here. It is the middle of the night! You can’t just bust in here after you’ve had too much to drink. You need to leave. Right now before you wake up Dan.”

“Dee, I haven’t been drinking … today. I swear. Listen.”

She looked over my should at James, Amelia, and Lauren and shook her head. “Leave. Now. Take your friends with you.”

James stepped into the apartment and faced Diana. His eyes closed briefly. “Diana is it? Listen, we were staying at my place but the power is out. We’ve got no air conditioning and it is hot as hell out there. Kaiser said you might be able to offer us a place to stay, just for the night?”

“Oh … air conditioner … sure. Sure. Come on in.” mumbled my sister as she shuffled back into her bedroom and shut the door.

I looked at James and he smiled.

Some time in between mind controlling cops with donuts and seeing a girl I used to know with a meat cleaver sticking out of her back, the sun had risen on Richmond. This in no way made the previous twelve hours any less creepy or disturbing. In fact, the lack of people on the streets and the morning haze was freaking me out.

Luckily, by this time sobriety and I had reacquainted ourselves and were getting along smashingly.

After James gave his award winning and grief stricken performance for Channel 12 I managed to convince him we needed to get the hell out of there. We were two dudes who broke into a murder scene and also happened to have close personal connections to the victims. We did not need to be there.

We ended up at Monroe Park surrounded by the unwashed masses — literally. At least the only people to hear us chatting about, oh say, double murders would be crazy bums. Monroe Park is always full of crazy bums, and today they all seemed to be asleep. Which was a bit odd as the cops usually make them “move along” before they could get a chance to doze off.

Just as we sat down on one of the few open benches a beat up grey Honda Accord tore down Franklin St. and skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. The woman driving threw the car in reverse and hastily pulled an excellent parallel parking job — which is unusual for a woman. The blonde got out of the car, along with the passenger: a cute girl with a nice rack. The blonde’s tight jean cutoffs bounced rhythmically towards us and then I finally remembered what was causing the nagging regret I’d felt for the last couple of hours:

NAME: Amelia Montgomery
DATE: February 4, 1998
PARTNER: Ben. Ben reminded me a lot of my dad before Mom died. He was gregarious and a great person to have at a party. I didn’t know he’d turn out to be such an asshole.
SETTING: My bedroom. Dad was working his night job which meant I had the house to myself. We could have done it anywhere, but the bedroom seemed safer for some reason.
PARTING THOUGHTS: It was terrible. Not the actual “business,” but the whole experience was awful. The business part wasn’t that splendid either to be honest. We drank a bottle of wine to cut some of the tension and then had about ten minutes of brief and awkward sex before I passed out. While I was sleeping he snuck out of bed and took a handful of polaroid pictures of me posed in various positions. I guess I must have been drunker than I thought. Of course he showed the photos to all of his friends, and of course I was humiliated.

Wow, I definitely should not have told her that the possibly most embarrassing moment of her life was “classic.” Sometimes I am such a dick.

The park was dead still except for a solitary bum shuffling up one of the paths. As Amelia marched up to our bench with the younger girl in tow she began to talk at us very rapidly and almost incomprehensibly.

“I don’t know who you two are but we need to talk. If you had anything to do with those murders I’ll murder you myself! Did you know those girls? Did you kill them? Also, I don’t need new tits, for your information.”

Amelia stopped, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

“Who exactly are you? How did you know those terrible things about me? He” she waved her hands wildly at James “is an asshole which makes you guys perfect for each other. By the way, thanks for puking on my shoes. Asshole.”

Lauren mumbled and rubbed her swollen eyes. I sat, somewhat bewildered, and James said “At least Lauren’s got some tits on her.”

Lauren, awoken from her daze by James’s comment, finally spoke up. “Lily was my friend! It was terrible … ” she began to trail off. “Hanging like that … from the ceiling … so much blood.”

James sat upright. “Sounds like you were up in that apartment last night. It was pretty gory wasn’t it? Blood splattered all over the floor and such. What were you doing up there, sweet tits? Covering your tracks?”

Amelia and Lauren both stared with wide eyes at James. “How, how could you know what it was like in that place? What were you doing there? Oh my god …” stammered Lauren as a look of fear started to spread across her face. It was dawning on her that she could be standing across from a crazed murderer.

James said, catching on, “Oh don’t worry. I didn’t kill your little friend or anyone else. Kaiser here has banged half of the city, and when we heard of some trouble up on Navy Avenue we thought we’d check it out. You know, to see if it was anyone Kaiser knew.”

By now the shuffling bum had turned off of the path and was shuffling his way through the grass directly towards us. He actually seemed to be limping rather than shuffling. Long dreadlocks hung over his bulky trench coat and his eyes stared, unfocused, at some indeterminable spot behind the four of us.

“Time out.” I said, turning on James. “Don’t give me that shit, man. You knew that girl swinging from the ceiling. I know you knew her. You’ve had sex with her. Plus don’t think that just because the lights didn’t work in there I didn’t see you swipe that picture off of the fridge. I don’t know what you’re trying to hide, but you better come out with it. I’m tired of fucking around.”

At the mention of the lights Lauren swung around and looked accusingly at Amelia. “The lights … the lights. Amelia, you!” Amelia took a step backward as her mouth moved but no words came out.

The way I figured it I was the only one there who wasn’t being accused by someone of killing a couple of kids in their spare time. I was about to point this out to the group when the bum limped past me and brushed my arm. Then the weirdest thing happened: I pulled up his card.

NAME: –
PAST: gulf war — xenophobia — violence
FUTURE: violence

This was exceedingly strange on three fronts. First, he was a dude, so I shouldn’t have been able to pull up his card at all. Second, the information seemed incomplete or missing. Third, the information on his card didn’t pertain to sex at all, and whatever it did pertain to looked like bad news.

The bum limped three steps into the middle of our heated argument when his eyes suddenly changed. Instead of staring vacantly forward his eyes now sparkled with something deeply disturbing and primal. He spun around and with a grunt reached into his trench coat. With a metallic hum he pulled out a two foot hand saw covered in either blood or ketchup.

In one quick motion — reminiscent of the move that sent James crashing onto the hood of a police cruiser the night before — the bum grabbed Lauren by her hair, pusher her on to her knees, and jammed the blade under her jaw.

Lauren looked up at me as shiny new copper pennies fell out of her eyes onto the path.

The blurry man-shaped blob seemed to be talking to me or at least talking in my general direction. I couldn’t quite make out what it was saying, but it seemed rather serious. Also, something I previously ate tasted suspiciously like vomit. The blob spoke up:

“Could you please step back onto the sidewalk? Sir. Step onto the sidewalk.”

James stepped out into the street, took my drunk ass stumbling with him, and looked after the blonde — Amelia — wistfully. Actually, he is way too much of an asshole to feel wistful. I’m sure he was trying to get a better view of her tight jean cutoffs bouncing into the night. The fading rhythmic sway of her ass reminded me of something I’d done and regretted but couldn’t quite call to mind.

“Sir I’m going to ask you one more time: step back onto the sidewalk!”

James swung around to face, what was apparently, a cop while simultaneously spinning me into the front end of a parked Ford Explorer. I crumpled onto the curb. “James! Hey, asshole! Whoa … did you know these curbs were granite?” James stared at the cop, the two of them separated by six inches, poked him square in the chest, and said, “Back up dickweed, I don’t need to smell what you had for dinner.”

Even from my limited experience with cops I knew this was not the wisest of decisions for James to make. Before he could do anything, and before I could get a word in to plead our case, the officer pulled some kung-fu jedi Jackie Chan shit and had James pinned up against his squad car. “Don’t you ever touch me asshole. What could you possibly be thinking?”

“Guys, this granite curb is soooo smoooth. Seriously. Smooth?” I offered as I pressed my face on the curb.

The granite felt nice and helped my eyes focus. As I reclined on the sidewalk I looked up at James’s face — which was held firmly against the hood of the cruiser — and he winked at me. This was weird as I certainly didn’t expect him to roll like that, not that there is anything wrong with it.

Just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me I explained “Brah … duuuuuuude.”

The cop pulled out his radio and began to chat it up with the sexy sounding broad on the other end of the line. James’s eyes closed as the cop began to speak. “Dispatch we’ve got a …” he paused as if looking for the proper word. “… donut. Over” he finished. Dispatch squawked out of the handheld radio, “Did you say donut?” Apparently he either did not hear dispatch’s question or didn’t give a shit because he holstered his radio and let James off of the cruiser.

“Listen,” the cop began “I’m going to let you off with a warning. That girl, Amelia, has had it pretty rough. Next time you see her leave her alone. I’m off to grab some chow. I’d suggest you hightail it home right now. Got it assholes?”

He turned to get in his car as a second squad car blew through a red light and skidded to a stop in front of our little sidewalk party. “Sanders! We’ve got a problem! Reported double murder suicide at Navy and Stuart. The radios aren’t working and we’re cut off from dispatch. We need to get over there.” Both cars sped off in the same direction of Amelia’s ass and tight jean cutoffs.

Feeling a bit sobered I stood up and stared at James.

“What just happened? Did you just call that cop a ‘dickweed?’ How did you get out of that? Double murder? Navy and Stuart? I used to bang a chick who lived at Navy and Stuart. She was totally smokin’. Seriously, what just happened?”

“God, you are such a little bitch. Give me a second, OK? James finally stepped back onto the sidewalk, turned to me, and sighed.

“Let’s just say I have a way with cops.”

Yeah, that was an understatment. “I’m going to need a better explanation than that. You basically punched that cop in the face and all he did was mumble something about donuts.”

James quickly glanced around. “You aren’t going to believe me and I’m drunk as shit — which I guess is about drunk enough to tell you: I can make cops crave donuts.”

“What?” I stared at him blankly. “Don’t all cops crave donuts? That’s like making sorority girls crave wang.”

“No man. Like. I can get into their heads, make them drop everything, and need a donut. It only works on cops, and it’s only donuts. That’s how I got out of our little fix. I made Officer Pain in My Ass realize that he needed to get over to Krispy Kreme on the double.”

I wish I had been sober. The twelve or so beers made processing this new information difficult. Maybe James had an abnormal, weird, and freakish ability just like me! It seemed overly specific and unexplainable — just like mine. He also used it to to his benefit, which, on further reflection, made me wonder just what other shady situations he had used this donut power to get out of. I decided to tell him about what I could do.

“Dude I need to tell … ” but James cut me off. He had an excited look on his face.

“Kaiser. Let’s go over to Navy and Stuart and see what the fuck went down over there. I can get us past the cops with no problem. You said you knew a girl who lived over there, don’t you want to see if she’s OK?” He smiled a thin greasy smile that, even considering how drunk I was, made me feel uncomfortable.

“James. You want us to sneak into a murder scene just so we can see ‘what went down?’”

“Kaiser. I’m going and you’re coming with me.” His eyes closed briefly and he smiled. “And you’ve got no choice asshole.”

I stepped onto the bus and took a quick survey of the empty seats: six total with four adjacent to various females. The vacant seat nearest the front cozied up to a girl whose hobbies were probably field hockey and The Mists of Avalon, not even worth investigating.

Taking the bus is just one of countless indicators that I’ve fallen from grace. I never leave the ‘burg therefore I don’t own a car. I don’t own a car therefore I must take the bus to Richmond. On any normal bus this would mean four and a half hours of sweaty hellacious tedium — probably seated next to an overweight middle aged divorcée whose fat rolls spill over into my chair. The bus doesn’t bring out the best crowd.

Luckily Blacksburg does not have a high percentage of fatties. In fact, it has a high percentage of the fine hunnies. Even the finest of hunnies sometimes lack a mode of transportation back to see their parents … when they are needy and homesick. Hey, I’m just saying.

I took a couple steps forward and purposefully dropped my iPod near the next open seat right under a beautiful blonde. While picking it up I briefly touched the blonde’s foot and my mental Rolodex began to spin.

That’s the easiest way to describe it. When I touch a woman I get a mental image of a card containing intimate details of her life. I don’t know how or why it happens. It’s abnormal, weird, and freakish but it can be tremendously useful. It isn’t like an autobiography or anything, just a few personal data. Actually, it is information pertaining only to the second time she had sex. Rather specific I know, but if you know what you are looking for it is all the information you’ll ever need.

I pulled up the blonde’s card:

NAME: Naomi
DATE: Last year on our third anniversary.
PARTNER: Dale, he’s my boyfriend!
SETTING: His dorm room on the third floor of Pritchard.
PARTING THOUGHTS: “I hope Dale is the one. He’s such a great guy!”

The blonde, Naomi as it turned out, was obviously not a likely candidate for a late night bus hookup. She did the dirty for the second time just a year ago (in the largest all male dorm on the east coast — gag). Plus she wanted to marry the guy. Way too complicated.

Moving further towards the back I came to the next open seat and brushed against the arm of a cute girl wearing glasses:

NAME: –
DATE: –
PARTNER: –
SETTING: –
PARTING THOUGHTS: –

While exceedingly cute and hookupable she either was a virgin or a virgin minus one. The cards only have information about the second time they’ve had sex so some people have blanks. Cases like this can go either way. She could be an “everything but the whole enchilada” type of girl, or she could be a “I kissed dating goodbye” type of girl. The former is perfect for a bus related good time, the later not so much. I’d rather not take the chance.

I pressed onward. I’m convinced that if you ask ten people where their first sexual encounter took place nine will say “on a bus.” Think about it: field trips, church camps, band competitions. When you’re young there aren’t too many dark and semi-private places where you can get close to some fine hunnies. You’re options are basically a long nighttime bus ride or Yogi Bear’s Cave at King’s Dominion — don’t knock the cave unless you’ve tried it. For some mysterious reason the bus retains its magical make out vibes for people well into their college years. You just have to find the right person.

I took the last empty seat next to some post-goth rock-and-roller chick with two tattoos of sparrows half covered by her wifebeater. She introduced herself as “Blade,” and I made a joke about American Gladiators. As we shook hands I brought up her card:

NAME: Jennifer Lingwood
DATE: It’s been at least four or fives years now.
PARTNER: Some guy at a show downtown who had a beard and an awesome tattoo of a skull dripping blood that was on fire.
SETTING: His studio apartment on Franklin for about three hours.
PARTING THOUGHTS: “God I love beards.”

Luckily I have a beard.

After three hours Jennifer, or “Blade,” fell asleep with her face pressed against the window. I thought about my sister Diana and how she never approved of my spontaneous encounters. I’ve never approved of her annoyingly lanky and overly emotional husband, so I guess we’re even. I knew just how the rest of tonight would pan out. She’d pick me up, we’d hug (I’d try to ignore her card, it’s always awkward), Dan would put on some shitty Bright Eyes album and talk about how he was the next Bob Dylan. He’d also probably talk about how the Beatles influence on modern music is overrated. Then we’d go to Grandma’s.

Grandma’s is the hipsterest hangout bar in Richmond. If you love tight denim pants and weird fashion mullet rat-tail haircuts you’ll love Grandma’s. We’ll get there and Dan will see about thirty people he knows and disappear into the crowd until close. Diana and I will get a table in the back and she’ll berate me for a couple hours about how I need to stop pretending that I’m still in college. I’ll drink about six beers and occasionally wander through the crowd flipping through my infinite Rolodex of second time sexual encounters.

I can’t wait.

Somewhere in our storied 260 years of higher education history Americans decided that college was no longer for sharpening the mind and advancing human knowledge. No longer! College is now for drinking beers, throwing parties, and doin’ chicks. For four — or in my case six — years hormonal teenagers live in an unsupervised, alcohol soaked, reality-free bubble. College does not prepare you for any work place (other than, maybe, Hooters) that I’m familiar with. Classes, GPA’s, magna-this-or-the-other: it’s all basically a load of bullshit.

Here, however, is something that most certainly is not bullshit: real life — life after college — sucks. Real life is full of bills, laundry, divorced women who feel the need to tell you all about their ex-husbands, and pants that don’t fit anymore.

Seriously, I’ve had to buy all new pants.

Specifically, my real life is full of a job at a State owned server farm just outside of Blacksburg in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. I live in town six blocks from an apartment where I once witnessed three girls box each other unconscious wearing nothing but chocolate pudding. I ride the bus to work and sit in the same seat I hurled all over sophomore year after a rousing night of Edward Forty Hands. You can still see the stain; it’s shaped like a potato. Basically, every facet of my life reminds me of how the best days of my life are gone forever. Like, seriously, forever.

It’s not even like I’ve moved on to better days filled with excitement and challenge. No, I’ve moved on to Junior Help Desk Ticket Manager, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Help Desk Tickets or managing if my daily routine is any indication. The job sucks, and they misspelled my name on my access badge: “Kaiser D. Sexilly.” Honestly. It’s “Saxille.” I’ve been called worse than sexilly, I suppose.

Shit, in this town it doesn’t even matter if you do things sexily or not. If you buy the drinks, the ladies — using the term loosely here — will drink them. And let’s face it: feed a college girl enough G&T’s and they’ll be up for anything. Sure, I can’t find a steady girlfriend that is my age, has a job, and isn’t in college, but I keep busy. It’s not as great as it sounds (it sounds fantastic though). Believe me, you can only handle five or six dozen overly tanned denim miniskirted females before you start to get bored.

Summary: the job sucks, the ladies suck but lack substance, and the town is excellent canon by which to measure just how far I’ve fallen. Which is why I’ve decided to get out of this place for a week or two. I’m leaving for Richmond tomorrow to attend a funeral. It’s a depressing reason to leave but, at this point, I’ll take it.

The dead man, the deceased, or whatever, is Chris Dennis. He played the drums for this excellent Dave Matthews cover band, Because of Dave Matthews, and lived with me and this other guy my sophomore year. He drowned yesterday while swimming in the river with a group of people out tubing. At some point he disappeared, but no one noticed when or where. Later that day his body washed up under a bridge.

Depressing.

Getting out of Blacksburg is going to be great, but I’m not overly excited about spending two weeks in Richmond — I’ve spent enough time there. I’m staying with my sister and her hipster husband Dan. I’d better get ready for a weekend with Bright Eyes. Tattoos, tight pants, and bad mustachios are why I left Richmond in the first place.

Well, It was a good liffe. I went to a great university, had a great job, married a great girl, made some great ffriends, and lived in a ffantastic town. There really isn’t much more a guy could ask ffor. Sure, I’ll leave this earthly plane missing out on some things but I’ve got no regrets.

Except ffor the whole “death by undead mastication” thing.

It’s hard to believe that the apocalypse began just last Wednesday. It’s even harder to believe that a couple off hours ago things were looking up: we’d ffound Justin, we’d made some more Westerly progress, and the zombies had thinned out. Affter that whole river/bridge/zombie ffiasco things went decidedly downhill.

Justin got the story mostly right. The local rubes had decided to lure as many zombies as possible out on to the bridge — which they would then blow to “smithereens.” They were using babies as bait — one off which, whom I saved, somehow ended up ffloating down the river. The second bundle that I risked my liffe to save was not ffilled with kittens. It was actually my bag and it was ffilled with my MacBook.

It still works, don’t worry — although the ‘ff’ key sticks.

Affter the explosion, I sat on a large outcropping off rock on the southern bank and watched zombie bits ffloat downstream. A school off severed heads swam by as I considered my options. At this point things weren’t really too bad: I was alone but alive and so too was everyone else — presumably. That whole thought process lasted about ffive minutes. Then the zombie horde arrived.

Apparently alerting the surrounding zombie inffested countryside to our exactly location by setting off a huge bomb was not the best off ideas. Behind me an unending wall off shambling undead crested the hill and stumbled towards the river — and me. On the north bank an amoebic mass was heading down 522 toward the bridge debris. A path to the railroad tracks was open!

Throughout our journey we had passed ffour or ffive abandoned trains lefft on the tracks by wigged out/zombiffied conductors. I remembered one about a halff a mile back ffrom the bridge. As last remnants off the zombie soup cleared ffrom the river, and as the zombie brigade marched behind me I picked my way careffully across the river and up to the tracks.

Then I ran.

You have to understand the situation. As I ran East towards the boxcars I could see hundreds off zombies cresting the hill on the other side off the river. Some even began to cross the river where the weaker current didn’t sweep them downstream. On my lefft I spotted a dozen or so pulling themselves over the top off the hill. I was surrounded.

It was a high stress situation: surrounded by rotting corpses that wanted to snack on my innards, separated ffrom my ffriends and ffamily, alone in every way, etc! Sometimes people don’t make the best decisions when ffaced with limited options and high levels off stress and panic. I’ll admit it: perhaps crawling into the empty boxcar and slamming shut the door as thousands off zombies hungrily descended wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.

Well it will be my last.

I’ve probably got another halff an hour in here beffore they break through the boxcar door and “rend me limb ffrom limb”, as they say. I don’t have much hope ffor Justin, Valerie, or, really, any other living soul within a dozen miles off Richmond. LBH people, there are *thousands* off zombies out there. Survival seems bleak — ffor me, impossible.

So this is it. I’m signing offff ffor good. Iff the world still exists and someone reads this, maybe you could get it published? It’d be like Anne FFrank but with zombies! Too soon?

PS. I’ve updated the map with the recent (and ffinal) travails and some points off interest.

Friday: Walked up the tracks for a couple of hours without incident. Clubbed a zombie. Found a nice secluded spot under some large oak trees to spend the night. Spent a cold sleepless night on the ground (I really should have worked on that whole fire by friction thing, some Eagle Scout I am).

Saturday: Stayed put and slept most of the day. Got up when the sun went down and continued West toward 288 to meet Justin. Broke into an abandoned house to steal some food and supplies. Ran like hell from some creepy zombified babies. Seriously. Zombie Babies, wtf. Fell asleep around dawn in an empty construction trailer.

As you can tell, the last few days have been pretty routine. Walk, sleep, re-kill things that should already be dead, fear for your life, etc. Wake up and do it all over again. It really isn’t too bad. The rail road is blessedly clear of humans — both the living and unliving kind — and according to Justin you’ve got to watch out for both.

Sometime, while Saturday night turned into Sunday morning we reached the 288 overpass.

Justin had already set up camp and was waiting patiently for us when we got there. It was fantastic to see another (live) human being that didn’t try to sniper us from the roof of an adjacent building. He seems like he has weathered the recent unpleasantness as well as can be expected. Sure he’s been shot through the shoulder and could use a shower. But we could all use a shower. He did tell me that after the last zombie he killed he leveled up to a lvl. 6 Barbarian and dumped the extra skill points into Deadly Blow. He couldn’t decide if he should put a few SP’s into Foraging and Farming. I told him you can’t eat if you’re dead.

Like I said, as well as can be expected.

We swapped remarkably similar stories about our adventures thus far before turning in for some sleep. Finally a small sense of normalcy has returned to our lives. I mean, sure, it is small, but it is there. We’ve chatted a little about our next actions. I think we will continue West on the tracks until we get out into the boonies. We figure the smaller the population density the smaller the chance of some zombie getting his tongue in my ear or some crazed suburban Rambo blowing our brains out while screaming the name of his dead wife.

Things are looking up.

PS. If there is one thing you can count on during a zombie apocalypse it is Google. I set up a cool “My Map” of our adventure thus far. I’ll be updating it as time goes by and time/zombies permit.

About that brains thing? Also, to everyone who said I shouldn’t have bought a wooden bat for protection in the city: you were wrong. But that’s getting ahead of things.

After spending some more time on the roof yesterday we decided that if we were going to relocate we needed to do so fast and away from the gruesome garden party taking place on Cary St. We also decided, well mostly I decided, to “let the dogs out.” RVAkid was right: the dogs would have only slowed us down. Luckily these things don’t seem to have any qualms with dogs (I haven’t seen any cats recently though …). We lowered the dogs off the porch roof using some extra sheets and both ran off to join the growing pack of local dogs prowling our street. Zapp was last seen looking stupid and Shooter was making sure no one was having any fun. They looked happy, I’m sure they will be fine.

In some good news, we saw the woman who “plays” guitar in front of the Byrd walking down Grayland with no arms! Huzzah!

We headed South to the River, to pick up the train tracks, and head as far West as possible — and hopefully pick up Justin on the way. Luckily both of us have bicycles. We packed two bags with some essentials (Louisville Slugger included), waited until our street was clear, and headed off. These things seem silent but deadly, but traveling by bicycle is great: you have maneuverability, stealth, and speed. Three things they don’t have.

We got to Pump House Park with no problems. The park has easy access to both the river and the rail road tracks and is nestled behind the dense residential neighborhoods. Standing in the middle of the bridge that crosses the canal was, what used to be, a (pantless) man. Well really a (pantless) man and the (pantless) lower half of another man. It seems the top half of the second man was misplaced during some sort of wilderness love affair but the business ends where still connected. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

They don’t call it Pump House park for nothing! Hey oh!

FYI: This is where the baseball bat comes in. Mr. NoPants was just standing in the middle of the bridge not making any movements towards us — other than some vague pelvic thrustings.

IBH, I’m not Cpt. Picard. I’m not going to use diplomacy when encountering a new life form that is missing a torso, and I certainly wasn’t going to let it whisper sweet nothings into my ear. I unleashed my bat and “swung away,” as it were; the wooden baseball bat was definitely the right choice. Moldy brains and skull bits exploded onto the railings. Mr. NoPants gave one more thrust, for olde tymes sake, flipped over the railing, and disappeared into the canal.

Valerie promptly threw up.

And that was that. We made it to the train tracks without further incident and decided to spend the night underneath the nearby train bridge. This morning we woke up and began to head West. I found a found wireless “hot spot” at a house on the river next to the Hueguenot Bridge and decided to post this.

We are heading up the tracks and will be crossing Parham and 288. Justin, if you can, try to meet us at one of these spots.

Also, we’ve left City proper and have yet to see any sort of military or civic authority. We have no idea what is going on. If you can, if anyone else is still alive, make your way to 288 near the river. We have a better chance of surviving together.