Journal Entry 402
May 22, 2025
Captain Jacob Billet
GRCC Transport Regiment 1
Bird shit everywhere.
I step out on my little balcony terrace and I am assaulted by a metal railing painted white and splatterings on the deck floor. I ain't touching it and it takes me a while to clean up before I feel like sitting out there and enjoying the view. After all, I enjoy a good mug of joe in the morning while looking out over the zombie-infested west side of town.
We need to use more birds for target practice. Get the big 30 and 50-cal machine guns warmed out and just start blasting the annoying winged monstrocities out of the sky.
Today marks the 12th anniversary of what the world now lovingly calls the day the zombie apocalypse began. Some kids, reading too many of those old Horror novels, think the Zee blight began after some satanic ritual was done, making the undead rise, and those that weren't dead, die and become the walking dead. Some uneducated think the dead just rose up and started their consumption of the living populace, you know, just rose up, no reason. Some say the wars in the Middle East and with North Korea, the detonation of "dirty bombs," terrorist attacks, started it all. Some think the government had something to do with it, an experiment gone awry or a means to reduce the population; always conspiracy theorists and theories trying to spread their black gospel.
Meh. Whatever.
It was the birds. Birds. BIRDS!
So today marks the 12th anniversary of when Influenza A virus subtype H7N9, originally reported to be afflicting China and Taiwan, came into being. W.H.O. (World Health Organization) reported there had been no migratory birds infected, or that the strain would be so severe as initial reports of people affected and dying from it initially were very low.
WRONG. Have wings, will travel.
As I glance out from my perch from the rooftop balcony of the old Grand Plaza Tower, looking west across the Grand River, into the west side of Grand Rapids, where at least three thousand undead residents reside and shamble about...the W.H.O. (better to have been left one of the greatest rock bands than a group overseeing the world's health) was wrong. What the countries with the initial outbreak didn't report (and I couldn't have blamed them at the time) was that the poor folks who'd fallen to the virus, got back up and had to be put back down by force, ie, the roar of a pistol or rifle point-blank in the ole brain box.
Someone fires from another window a few floors below me. A pigeon flying by turns into a cloud of feathers. Heh. Other than the Colonel will hand their ass to them for using a firearm inside the barracks, someone's got the right idea.
The Human Race, the surviving, breathing, heart-beating living ones, has always endured calamities. This is no different I suppose. Those of us who stay on this side of the dirt keep pushing onward. You either survive or succumb.
Yeah, I have had my setbacks, and on some days they want to drag me to that Give Up state, and I sometimes think about letting it all bring me down and consume me (possibly in a literal sense if I were to just walk OUT THERE into our friendly neighborhood face-eaters). May sound a bit cliche here, but, yeah, my daddy and momma didn't raise no quitter. Though I've lost a lot, there are still people who need me, things to do, actions needing to be done to keep our heads above water...and the rot of the undead.
White wash cleaned off my little perch above my world, I step out with steaming cup of joe in one hand. Black and white Canadian honker just so happens to fly by. BOOM! The barrel of my .44 smokes. A pile of black feathers tumbles down, down, down.
"Keep on comin' ya flying plague bearers," I mumble.
As long as we got bullets, birds and Zees beware.
