jacklawsonsurvivor-blog

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

Discussion II

It is here in these journal entries that Jack was met with some of the hard truths of the life around him that he was oblivious too. Josephine Smith was an abuse survivor for the better part of her life. Her post era memoirs described her early life as “Less than wonderful” Her mother was an Opioid addict and her father was in the military and over seas for his work a lot. Her mother was also a serial cheater who brought her boyfriends home in front of her daughter. 

When she was 17 she ran away from her mother and moved in with her Paternal grandfather. (Her father was KIA in Afghanistan). Here she finished High School and attended the University of Maryland getting two degrees. One in history and the other in Teaching.  She met Marko at school and soon became a couple. In her memoirs she talked about his abuse and how it started once they were married. He was violent when he was stressed and often took it out on her. His attitude got worse the better she was at her job. When she was given a grant to write a book he broke her left wrist. Marko, she says, was every bit of the charismatic abuser. 

In these journal entries we also are introduced, however briefly to Shelia and Donna Haskins. A Lesbian couple (and one of the first to get married in Maryland) and good friends with the Lawsons. They were already semi prepared for the Zombie era due to their camping hobby.  In the coming months and years Shelia will prove to be one of Jack’s closest friends and allies in the struggles to come. 

Today’s reading isn’t going to be journal entries but an excerpt from Josephine’s Memoirs (The Zombie Killer’s Better Angel) chapter “Early Days with Jack” 

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

Journal Entries II

Editors note: TW for attempted sexual assault.

April 27th 2018

I still have power as of the time i am putting these thoughts down. I have spent the past day glued to CNN and other news channels (fuck Fox News) and i think shit might be fucked beyond control. According to the news most of upper Maryland and parts of West Virginia and Penn are under a “Total Quarantine” by the Federal Government spearheaded by the CDC. It means that i am stuck here in my area for the moment. I am very glad my sweet wife is far from this. I am really unsure of how i could handle all of this with her here.

I went out yesterday and talked to my neighbors. Shelia & Donna are set with food and water for a while and we can see each other without having to go outside to signal. I gave them some nails to help board up the windows out front. Jeff & Barb aren’t home and i haven’t seen them for a while. I don’t know if they tried to bolt early but they have three kids. i Really hope they were on vacation far away. Finally Marko & Josephine are screwed it seems. They spent most of their money this week trying to get supplies from the food lion and weis but it seems price gouging and mugging was going on.  Marko has a really bad black eye and Jo isn’t much better. she got a knife wound up her arm. I gave her some of my wife’s thread in case her would came open and some more food.

The news is full of vids of attacks and the National guard shooting at people to get back away from the makeshift boundaries. The worst was at the Penn border. At least a dozen were shot as they tried to get out of the quarantine. The video of a little girl dead and starting to twitch as she got up will haunt me forever i think.

April 28th 2018

Things are breaking down fast. A house a block down that i can see from the deck caught fire. No one came to put it out. So far i haven’t seen any dead, zombies, biters whatever the fuck people want to call them. I still have power. So well done potomac edison. I talked to her today. My wife is holding it together but she cried on face time. i showed her all my supplies and how the house was defended. it made her feel better. she told me how much she loved me and happy birthday a day early just in case she can’t tomorrow. There have still been no reports of the pathogen showing up west of the Mississippi for a few days. CNN says they have it contained (In America) to mostly the East Coast. Lucky us.

After i got off the phone i decided to do a real audit of my supplies:

8 gallons of water, 24 canned soups, 4 pounds of white rice, 24 cans of ginger ale, 5 boxes of protein bars, three packs of fig newtons, two packages of crackers, 6 pounds of salt, 2 cases worth of random beer, 9 bottles of high proof booze, 20 cans of random veggies, 10 cans of fruits, 4 pounds of flour and random other stuff in the pantry. 3 twenty pound bags of cat food (for the cat)

As far as weapons go i have my baseball bat, 4 folding knives, a hunting knife, my compound bow with 25 good arrows and 5 not so good arrows. 1 old broad head, 5 current style broad heads, 3 stopper heads, 3 bleeder heads, 19 field points (bodkins), my .20 gauge with 10 slugs and 15 buck shot, and my .45 with 2 full boxes of ammo. Plus random lethal things in the garage.

i am well set and really hope this blows over buy i doubt it.

April 29th 2018

Happy Birthday to Me. Still have power but it has flickered a few times. I talked to Mom for the first time in days. Dale got her out of maryland and long with my step dad and youngest sister. i will owe that man forever. They couldn’t say where they are and that she can’t talk for long but she wanted to tell me she loved me and that she was safe. Mom tears are the worst. Hannah cried a lot too shes safe and really sad they couldn’t take the dog but shes safe and that is all that matters. Andy, god bless him, told me he knew i would be safe and that this is nothing for a gamer nerd like me to handle. he joked i have been training for this my whole life and  should be fine. Bless that man for making me laugh.

Dad called too. He is safe so is my step mom and step sister but,...my grand parents are dead. Someone went though the entire old people complex and shot almost everyone in the night. A letter was left talking about giving mercy to the infirm before things got worse. Dad is not ok. He is trying to be but he is not. He has food and weapons plus plenty of ammo. He is far from the quarantine area but ready just in case. i told him i would be fine. i hope i wasn’t lying.

I can still smell the smoke from the house that burnt down. I had the fire place cleaned last year so at least i don’t have to worry too much if it is still like this in winter. fuck. my grandparents are gone for no fucking reason. Lord give my old man strength.

May 3rd 2018

Where to start? Power is out and i don’t think it is coming back. There was an attack of Zombies two days ago. It started at the house behind me. I woke up to screaming and the power out. My new neighbor (i never met her not really) was screaming and holding her kid and trying to run out her back door. I could see she was bleeding. Her husband was following her. Fast. His face seemed wrong and distorted. Blood was all down his front. Before i could grab a gun or anything really the kid started spasming or something. Then ...then he ripped open her throat with his teeth. i puked up everything in me.

The neighbors next to them opened their doors and came out to see what was up. The kid sprinted like a shot to Ginny. She was nice. She liked to grow potatoes on her deck. She was hoping to make vodka this year. She won’t now. The kid got her in the gut. i had never seen guts before. i wish i haven’t. i froze for just a moment longer but the gun shots got me out of it. Someone i hadn’t met started shooting at the kid. center mass doesn’t work on zombies. i thought we knew that already. The Dad started moving again to the sound of the shots. i aimed at the kid with my .45. it was a long shot but i hit him. back of his head blew off.

Doug tried to calm his wife Ginny and didn’t listen when i screamed across the back yard to back off her. She turned and took a chunk out of his face. Their son Robbie didn’t wait. He took a bat to his Mom’s head. His Dad went inside. i heard a single bang not long after. The zombie Dad i didn’t know was still running after the shots. No idea what happened after that. It seems all that commotion must have called the other Zombies that had been around but had no reason to come my way. I did a fast check of the doors and my windows. i could see Donna on her deck give me the all clear.

i went out to my deck with my shotgun and my bat across my back. I could smell something horrible. Marko was walking at our fence line just sort of shambling. When he turned i could see his stomach was open and trailing his intestines. i didn’t eat for 24 hours or so. Jo was standing on her suv and started to scream for me. That of course called over all of the Zombies that had started to gather. I don’t know what i was thinking and i don’t know if i was really. if i had been thinking i don’t know if i would have done this. i ran to Marko and stopped two feet from him and shot him in the head. I told Jo to start running to me and head up the deck stairs. I shot two more Zombies. One i didn’t know and the other was a kid i saw at his bus stop all the time. God forgive me but i didn’t hesitate.

We made it inside.

I got her calmed down and told her she needed to show me that she wasn’t bit or scratched. She did but wasn’t really happy with me right then but i think she gets it now. She wasn’t but. She took her clothes off but i told her keep her undies on. i hope she appreciated it. I got her fed too. Her arm cut held. The short version is Marko was fuming about getting his ass kicked trying to find food and took it out on Jo. Seems this was a thing he did. I never knew. i feel like shit. i shared my good booze with that man. He tried to rape her. pinned her down and was going to “do what he wanted in what holes he wanted.” she said that she felt something break in her. She grabbed a knife (this happened in their kitchen) and managed to sliced him enough to make him let go. He charged she did it again and cut him all the way open.

She had only a few moments to breath before he turned. He chased her around the house and out the door. She hid on the top of their deck roof for hours. She said by the time she came down Marko wasn’t running anymore just shambling. She got chased up on the SUV then i walked out.

I need a drink.  

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

Journal Post Discussion.

As you can see Jack had a support system that gave him a leg up on the coming troubles. Dale Willows, his best friend since childhood, was a agent for the Department of Deference and held a very high clearance with the US Government.  We know from recovered documents that Mr Willows was one of the people who knew, if only somewhat, what was being worked on in the Frederick Base. When he found out that the pathogen was released he spent the next day working on getting people he was close to safe.

Willows knew that he could not risk getting Jack to safety but (as Jack had guessed) could not let his friend go into what was to come without the proper supplies. That was the reason for the panicked phone call and the insistence on getting supplies. What Willows did not tell Jack was that he was getting Jack’s mother, step father and youngest sister out of Maryland and into a special facility that was set up for outbreaks of Bio-weapons.

What do we learn about Jack Lawson in the first few entries of his journal? We can see that he is the kind of person who wants to know what is going on around him. He pays close attention to the news even before the outbreak happened. He obviously loves his wife and has the ability to feel compassion for his cat. These are two qualities we will see shape how he makes decisions as the events unfolded in front of him. The most important quality that we see in this man is his ability to take information and run with it. So many other people during this vital time did not want to believe that a fantasy creature in Zombies was made real. They denied the reality that they were in and it cost them everything or nearly so. Jack we see takes the information and just accepts what his eyes were telling him.

Over the next set of journal readings we will see a very quick falling apart of the social norms in and around Frederick city and County and what that means for those who are there. We will also be introduced to some of the people that will become very important to Jack as he later builds the community that will deal with the new zombie outbreak era.

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

April 13th - 26th

April 13th 

ok journal update time. Just got back from Atlanta and the house seems odd without Wife lady here. I know she will be home in just two weeks but still. At least she will be home for my birthday and i will still get my favorite meal! My silly kitten of doom (Lady Socks) snubbed for for all of 30 mins before she relented and allowed me to pet her. Cubs won and the season is looking good so far. 

However! seems there was something going on at scary ass detrick while we were gone. The news and the paper say it was a small contamination break but that it didn’t pose a threat to the area. I am very glad Mary and I did not buy a house out that way when we moved here. Between the cancers people get and the thought of what ever weird shit they get up to it just isn’t healthy to live there. 

April 15th 

Uh well being without a job right now sucks. I am board as shit and feel like i am not doing enough for the house. Yeah sure wife lady is a GS-14 and can pay all of our bills and then some by herself but i just don’t feel like i am pulling my weight. I applied for 7 more jobs today. Went down to the river too. Caught some nice fish including the biggest trout i have ever caught. I hope he knows that he was very tasty and that his sacrifice was worth it to me and the cat. I swear i had to fight her just to cook the damn thing. Crazy cat. 

More weird shit going on in town. The late news had some sort of report on attack at the hospital over on 7th street. Details were sketchy but when ever i hear about something like that happening at a hospital i get nervous. Maybe i am just too much of a nerd but that is how crazy apocalypse shit starts. 

April 18th. 

Talked to Mary. Her work trip is going well and she even got a chance to try some great brews out in Utah of all places. I guess even the Mormons are chilling out about good beer.....Talked to Ma too. She is trying to figure out when we can meet up for birthdays i told her she needed to speak with Mary about it because i am pretty sure she is up to something. No hits on work yet but i am still keeping at it. My hope is to have something before June. 

That thing at the hospital turned out to be some Bath salt type drug induced shit. This is why we need to end the war on drugs and do like Portugal. It would make more sense to clean up street drugs and tax the shit out of them. People can get high as fuck in a safe place and society can move the fuck on. 

April 22nd

Aunt Rose would have been 90 today. I miss her a decade on. Still she wouldn’t want us to be sad. She would want us to have a stiff drink to her memory and maybe go get crab cakes. Think i just might do that. Had an interview today as well. Turned down the job. They wanted me to do medical collections on low income houses. Fuck and No to that. I have done that before and got fired for writing too much off. Never the fuck again will i step foot in that work. Mary agreed with me. Soul crushing work would not be worth the paycheck. 

Ok what the actual fuck is going on in the news. Here in Maryland we have all kinds of people acting like PCP addicts. Two people yesterday attacked restaurants claiming they couldn’t get full and started ripping the place apart for raw meat. They got shot by cops when they wouldn’t stop attacking people. THEY TOOK SHOT TO THE CHEST AND KEPT GOING! Took a head shot to bring them down. This more of that bath salt shit? Also the BBC says in London an american tourist had some kind of fit and started attacking people and killed some woman by biting her throat out. fucking weird. 

April 25th 

Fucking hell that tourist in London? I knew them! It was Greg Flynn that awesome cook from the brew pub down town. What the hell. I am asking that too much. Dale hit me up today and told me to go to the store and buy all the dry goods, batteries, water, and the like i could. he also told me to go and get shells, arrows and wood for windows. He told me all of this but made me promise to not go around telling other people. I have known this dude since we were 8 and he has never ever given me a reason that this was bullshit. So i did. i look like a fucking weirdo prepper but when the guy with a high class clearance and known Generals by their first name you just do what he says. 

i kept the receipts juuuuuust in case he lost hit nut for a day or something. 

April 26th AM

Uh wtf? I woke up to Mary calling me and asking if i was home and ok and all kinds of stuff. It was 3am and while yes since she is not home i have been staying up late reading and playing games 3am is a bit even for my fat ass. She said that there are all kinds of news stories about Frederick and the surrounding area being quarantined. first i fucking heard about it. The news says it was that fuck up at Detrick. Some sort of pathogen did get out. I have seen this movie before. We are so very fucked aren’t we? Someone get Hoffman up in a helicopter to stop them from bombing my county. Mary is safe out in Utah so that is one thing off my mind. 

I got off the phone and thanked Dale in my head for telling me to get supplies. Then i thought if he knew this was going down why didn’t he just tell me to get the fuck out? He thinks i have the pathogen. He was playing odds. I bet he couldn’t stand thinking i would be caught flat footed but couldn’t risk me having what ever got out of the base. Guess i can’t blame him. He has a kid to worry about. Called Mom and my Pop and sisters too told them i am fine have plenty of supplies and i’m not sick. Dad of course asked about my guns, bullets, and the like Mom was more worried about  food and my step dad didn’t seem worried at all. My sister Loraine is taking the kids to her in-laws out in Washington State for a few weeks. She has the right idea i think. 

April 26th PM

WELL FUCK! How fucking stupid does a group of people have to be to not listen to nerds when they say something is a bad idea? Who in government/bio-weapons creation though making A ZOMBIE PATHOGEN WAS A GOOD FUCKING IDEA?! You have got to be kidding me with this shit. Zombies?! That shit is supposed to be not real for a fucking reason. Ok from the top. 

I still have power for now and i am able to watch the news and the like. There is a video being aired that shows two men and a woman in uniform with half bitten off faces and arms walking down rt 15. well staggering (at least these are Romero’s and not Boyle’s) getting hit by a car and when the lady gets out to see what she hit she GET EATEN! The guy hit by the car just gets up and bites the ever loving fuck out of her. 

So needless to say after watching that at 10 this morning i put all that lumber and stuff to work. the windows in the basement, and first floor are now blocked but i have some small eye holes cut out so i can see. the door is bared from the inside and the sliding glass door on my deck in reinforced. I locked the garage and set up a watch post from the top floor. I cut down as much of the tree out front as i could to give myself a good view. i pulled in my whiskey barrel planters just incase i need to grow food in the house. I took stock of my food, water, and other essentials. so there is that. I figure as long as i don’t act like a fucking glutton i have enough food for two to three months. Socks has enough cat food for fucking forever considering we got a deal on cat food just before all of this. I sent Mary some pics of what i did. She is full on melting down. They shut down all flight to Maryland and the surrounding area today. She has a Cousin out on Wyoming that is the closest person she has and she is heading there now by road. She should be there soon and is going to text me.  wtf is going on?! 

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

Chapter 1 Pt 1 Early Days

AS we discussed last class the Zombie Outbreak had just started and had not fully been understood yet. We had not yet read any of the recovered journals of Jack Lawson or anyone else for that matter. Today we are going to start with the first few entries in what is considered the first of his journals. 

We will be picking up in his journal from the days after the outbreak i will now go over a very brief overview of his other entries before the outbreak so you know who he is and we can get to the meat of this class. Jack was a native Marylander born there and spent his whole life there or possibly in Pennsylvania during one winter of the era. He was a large man standing almost Six and a half feet tall and before the outbreak about 340 pounds. He kept his hair long and sported a common facial hair at the time called a Van Dyke. His long blonde hair and red beard led his friends to dub him a “viking” after the ancient people of Northern Europe. We also know that while he was unemployed at the start of the outbreak he had been working as an accountant prior to losing his job. 

From post era interviews with his surviving family, his wife, and those who he lead during the Era we know that he was mostly a kind man with flashes of temper that , at times, caused him to act rashly. Those same people also would say about Jack that he was the single most loyal person they knew and could not imagine a better friend to have during the Zombie Era. Now onto the days just after the outbreak. We start with his April 13th through the 26th entries. He had been in Atlanta with his wife’s family and she had departed for Utah for her work. 

[jacklawsonsurvivor-blog]

Overview

It has been some time since humanity has taken back its world from the Zombie threat. While yes the occasional outbreak can still happen for the most part it is very rare to be almost unheard of. That being said it is a very important part of our history and i encourage anyone to study the cause, effects, and the stories of those who survived it. 

The hard facts that are without dispute about the Zombie Outbreak Era (ZOE) start with the day it was first reported or Z-Day. April 12th 2018 around 11 A.M. local time in Frederick Maryland the alarms at Ft Detrick  Army base went off signalling a containment break. What is not known with any certainty is what caused the issue. Recovered emails have suggested that it was a Russian hacker than somehow released all of the containment at the base thinking it was only a common bio weapon and not the Z-Virus. 

We know now that the virus was only airborne for 5 to 6 hours before it went inactive, however in that time it was able to spread to the population of Frederick Maryland and the surrounding counties. The virus itself did not manifest symptoms for several days in the population which let those people travel both in state and to other countries. It was not until April 20th that the first death and reanimation was discovered and by that time the virus in the population had spread with every sexual contact, with every shared needle, and with every sick person’s mucus touching another human. 

The full breakdown of eastern sea board in America took until June but the fear and purges of anyone so much as sniffling brought about so much strife that we as Humans almost didn’t have the ability to come back from this trauma.  While first world nations like America, Canada, the UK and China were able to stem the tide of the risen dead with containment walls and natural borders like mountains and rivers other more poor countries were not able to stem the tide. 

From June of 2018 until December 21st 2029 the ZOE held the world in its grips. In this History class we will discuss the ways humanity came together to fight that threat 52 years ago, the survivors and their stories, along with how that era still affects us today. Next class we will start to discuss Jack Lawson, the best known survivor, and how his journals helped many survive as well.