The Zom Diary by Eddie Austin

break his word easily.  It is looking more and more like I am going to have to get used to having neighbors.
        I say I’ll see him in two weeks or so and bid him farewell.  I watch him hike off the lawn and past Bill’s.  It feels good to be alone again.

Chapter 5
     
         I decide that it is time to cut loose a little bit.  I grab my AK from the barn and a clean five gallon plastic bucket.  I walk the orchard weaving through the rows of trees, walking along old beaten paths in the grass, and making new ones where needed.  I pick and peruse, filling the bucket with pears and oranges; avocados and lemons.  I am sweating by the time I get it back to the yard.
         The sun is up and it is pleasant outside; not cool, but not very hot either.  There are a few clouds way up high like they want to stay as far away from our mess as possible.  I laugh at them and give them the finger.  Who needs you anyway?
         Capering over to the door to the barn, I throw it open and walk back to the trapdoor that leads to the basement.  Feeling around, I find a quart mason jar on the back shelf packed loosely with bright green buds of weed.  I also grab two bottles of the good stuff--pear hooch.
         I bring this up, grab my belt pack, and walk back out by the fire.  I set the hooch and jar of herb next to the fruit and go back inside to change.  I come back outside wearing only a bright blue Speedo and flip flops.  I stop at the pump and let cold water run over my head and through my beard.  It runs down my tanned chest and drips onto my knees.
         I go to sit by the fire and hold the jar to my face once it is opened.  The contents are phenomenal.  It smells of evergreen, rotting peaches, and spicy B.O.  The neon green buds are interwoven with yellow and orange hairs, bristling with crystals of THC.  This is the ‘giggle weed’ from the west end of the orchard.  Sativa.  Not too speedy, but just…well, bright. 
         The first bowl pack leaves me with a permanent grin, and, as the world grows brighter, it is almost as if the light is pixilated as it strikes objects around me.  I spend a great deal of time examining the effect this has on my thumbnail.
         I shake my head slightly as if to clear it and pick up a jar of hooch.  Condensation has formed on the outside making it slippery.  Still, I open it and down half of the jar in one big swig.  From this point on, I let my fancy take me where it will.  I roll in the grass.  I walk around tapping the boards on the barn with a long nail I find.  I climb a pear tree and hang from a branch before dropping to the grass.  I poke around in the wood pile to see if I can find a snake or lizard for a pet. I want to make a home for it and name it Charles.
        And so I pass the day slipping further and further into my sunlit reverie.  I eat fruit when I am hungry and drink water when I thirst.  I tan and rub lemon juice into my beard to facilitate the bleaching process.  I am a wild man.
     
    ⃰     ⃰     ⃰
     
       I’m not sure where I am at first when I awaken the next day.  I am certain that there is a rattlesnake in a bucket next to my bed with some weeds and a bowl of water.  There are fruit peels and empty jars and pear cores everywhere.
        I say, “Good morning, Charles.”

Chapter 6
     
         I sleep in for quite some time, burrowing into the blankets like a maggot.  It is past noon, I imagine, when I finally let the ladder down and explore the first floor of the barn.  I have my AK slung by my side and I am sure that if I let a zombie in yesterday, I would be hearing it knocking around by now.  Then again…
         The storeroom is unoccupied.  I have been neglecting my duties here favoring the same AK for the past week or so.  I am being lazy. I should have stripped the AK and cleaned it by now; checking another gun.  All this is true, but it is also true that AK-47’s are about