The Diary of Jill Woodbine: A Novel of Love, Lies, and the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  The Diary of Jill Woodbine

  A Novel of Love, Lies & the Zombie Apocalypse

  by Jay Smith

  The Diary of Jill Woodbine

  By Jay Smith

  Based on “HG World: The Online Audio Drama Series” by Jay Smith

  Produced by Michael L. Stokes & Bryan Lincoln

  www.goodmorningsurvivors.com

  From the audio novel by Jay Smith, read by Veronica Giguere

  Text copyright 2012 Jay Smith

  Print Edition produced by CreateSpace, an Amazon company.

  Cover Design by Jay Smith

  Acknowledgements

  This novel would not be possible if not for a radio drama series called HG World, the story of a zombie apocalypse. I want to thank the cast and crew for their incredible work and lending me the talent that turned a big stack of pages into an award-winning source of entertainment for thousands of listeners.

  Specifically, I want to thank three important woman who inspired me to create Jill Woodbine and bring you this book.

  Thank you to Veronica Giguere who voiced the role online for the podionovel and gave life to Jill and all the other people living in her world.

  Thank you to my wife Pam Smith who believed in Jill and her story and who keeps me writing.

  Thank you most of all to my mother Jean Mayer Smith who, for over 40 years, never stopped believing in me despite all the reasons she could have.

  CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTIONS ARE IN ORDER.

  If this is a diary, I should start with a "Dear so-and-so" right? But I've been sitting here trying to think who I'd send it to. I’d love to send this to my parents to tell them I’m okay and maybe get something back to assure me they’re the same. I’d love to know where to post this so it reaches my friends from school – the ones still out on the road, maybe dead…maybe somewhere between. But As I type this out, the fact that anyone I would want to read this will never know how to find it makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me want to find a way out of here and run. Just run until I fall down or get caught. But I’m really not able to do that, so I’ll just move past the salutation and into the content portion. I’ll figure it all out later.

  Let me start at the top. My name is Jill Woodbine. I just turned 21 years old. I was a student at Centre Valley University in Clarion County, however I do not believe I will be graduating.

  As I type this, I’m sitting on a cot with my head propped up on musty pillows against a cold cinderblock wall. On the other side of that wall is a disaster that none of us see going away any time soon, so I try to keep focused on what’s happening on this side.

  As you - whoever "YOU" are - probably know well enough, the world had a bit of a disagreement with the dead. The dead didn't want to stay dead. In fact, they much preferred getting back up to eat the living. The eaten would fall down, die, get up and join the band. Depending on who you believe, there are anywhere from 30 to 99 not-dead, hungry cannibals out there for every one of me. Or you.

  For the last 90 days I’ve been stuck in a big warehouse-slash-relocation center in western Pennsylvania. I was told we’d be relocated FROM here, but there’s been no word on that. I’m about 300 miles from home and I’m stuck. Like most of the hundred or so people in here with me, I don’t know what’s happened to most of the people in my life. At the same time they don’t know what’s happened to me. The last time I talked to my mom, I told her I was leaving school and coming straight home. From there, she and my stepdad were getting ready to charter a plane to a place in Canada where they were told things aren’t as bad. But I ended up here instead.

  “Here” is a place called HG World, which was a big home improvement “do it yourself” warehouse that you see across the country. I am assigned “Bunk 221” in what they call “Birch Section .” The people who run this place call this little room “barracks” though I’m pretty sure this used to be a spot where they sold lawn tractors. We have walls made of blue plastic tarp and plywood squares. Around me, steel shelves rise up about 60 feet toward the ceiling and some dirty skylights. Those and the rows of glass block windows in each wall give us light to live by. But it’s a gray, dull place. We’re sealed inside for the winter. There are no big bay windows, just cinderblock. Construction projects inside make it noisy and difficult to get around. There seem to be people in charge, but all I get to see are guys in red aprons called “Constables” who keep the peace and tell everyone what to do and where to go. We’re not allowed to leave. I don’t know who decided that rule, but we all seem to obey it. I hear there’s a prison for people who don’t go along with the constables. I hear that if you’re bad enough, they can quote-Evict you -end quote, like this is all just some reality show. I know for a fact that several people I came inside with have gone “missing” even though they weren’t sick or infected or doing bad things.

  I don’t want to seem morbid, but I don’t know how long we’ll be here. I don’t know why we haven’t been rescued yet or if there is anyone left out there to try. Sometimes I think the people running this place don’t want us to leave. Sometimes I dream about being one of a hundred corpses left inside this mausoleum, dead but never dying like the monsters outside these walls. Sometimes I dream of the silence of final death and think… that’s not so bad. So much for not being morbid, huh? Well, that’s really why I want to keep busy like everyone else. I want to get off of this bed, but the doctor here says I’m one of the “walking wounded.” A twisted, swollen ankle…it gives me too much time to think. I hope I can heal up quick and stop thinking so much and be a happy idiot like everyone else.

  Meanwhile…How I ended up here is a short story, but it pretty much sums up how screwed things are outside. In the space of a few weeks, my world went from the usual batch of screwed up and went full-on stupid.

  Case in point -- About three months ago, I was rescued from a mutant cannibal by a police officer and some local yokel who looked like he won his badge at the bottom of a Costco size bag of pork rinds. It was about that time I met my first Eater. Let me try to explain this…

  CHAPTER TWO – SCHOOL’S OUT

  I was in my third week of my sophomore year at CVU when the university suddenly closed down and sent people home. This wasn’t a shock because very few of the professors even showed up for the start of classes and a lot of the usual local shops and stores were closed down. Centre Valley was basically a ghost town. It was like school had closed, but someone forgot to tell the students.

  Some of my friends and other folks in the dorm stuck around campus. Most students left after the first week because their classes had no teachers – or students – or unlocked classrooms. Others, I guess, thought it would all blow over and they could stay drunk until it did. The commissary remained open and kids with student loan money or trusts funds or whatever were able to eat. The local shop-n-rob had been stocked for a full campus, so there was no shortage of deodorant, cheese doodles, beer, pot, porn or whatever a healthy college student needs to get through days of doing absolutely nothing. At the same time, a lot of kids freaked out and started a lot of drama trying to get home, mostly freshmen whose parents sent them out by bus or dropped them off…some were part of a carpool that didn’t exist or left without them. There was a weird lack of concern about loved ones that I think – or I hope – was just well-concealed. Isolation begets ignorance, even in higher learning.

  Centre Valley is in the middle of nowhere. You come here to get away from somewhere else and to get back; you gotta travel a lot of back roads through a lot of hillbilly territory to
even find a highway. I guess if the freshmen there felt like I did the first time I cruised into campus, I’d freak out, too. Without cell service or solid wireless…it was like roughing it.

  When the commissary caught fire and there was nobody left to try and put it out, I thought it was a good time to load up and boogie on down the road. The first ten miles of double-yellow lines were easy, but once I hit the main 4-lane heading south, traffic just got worse every mile.

  Eventually, my car was stuck in a snarl of traffic just south of the Interstate 80 exchange. I spent two hours idling my engine and watching nervously as people started pulling their cars and trucks onto the shoulder or median, get out and wander on down the road. Some folks didn’t bother getting off the road. They just shut off their engines, gathered as much stuff as they could carry and led their family or friends or whatever off in one direction or another.

  See, if you know how weird things are out there, you’d understand why walking around outside by myself wasn’t my first choice. I held on to this silly idea that the road would clear up and I could get on down to route 79 South and shoot on down to Elwood City where I had family waiting for me. But that wasn’t happening. After a while, it was just me and a few other scared, tired faces peering around for signs our wait was worth it. But as the afternoon wore on, things changed.

  It occurred to me that I might want to unplug my music player and turn on the radio. I punched the SCAN button and let it run up the frequency range, finding nothing but faint signals clogged with noise. On the AM band, however, it picked up something I wish I’d heard before I set out. The Emergency Alert system was live, giving instructions where to go for shelter. Major cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Lancaster and the state capital of Harrisburg were being evacuated to facilitate military action against the walking dead. I had never heard anyone speak openly or officially about the monsters before. And I didn’t want confirmation while I was alone on the road in the middle of nowhere.

  Nobody I knew had ever seen a “necroambulate” or whatever they were called. The television wasn’t allowed to show them. Sure, they were on YouTube and online, but the government was pretty good about blocking IPs and debunking what it called hoaxes. It was something about “human dignity” and honoring the dead. We weren’t all that curious to see it up close. If you really wanted to see it, you could find it. But the majority of us were more worried about looters and rioters, thugs and rapists than flesh eaters. That was until we started seeing the dead walk.

  It was toward late afternoon and about half an hour since I’d moved an inch. My car was in Park and turned off. The slight chill in the air was enough for me to keep my windows up and the sheer weirdness of the day made me keep the doors locked. I kept an eye on the road ahead for any sign of movement and noticed a group of men with rifles winding up between the vehicles, peeking into windows, opening doors and poking through things left behind. Mounted troopers lined both sides of the road keeping pace with the men on foot. There were maybe ten men heading up the road and that’s when I started getting scared. These men were checking cars, doing a little looting when they found something left behind they liked (and when the uniformed troopers on horseback weren’t looking) and – most unnerving - they were wrestling people out of their rides. When they found someone, the uniformed staties in their flat-brimmed hats brought their horses through the tangle of cars and spoke to them. They spoke to them calm and firm…then the local boys would drag them off south and out of sight. Before I could duck down out of sight, one of the staties pointed me out.

  All of a sudden there’s this big redneck jackass pointing a shotgun at me through my windshield, telling me to get out of my car. Given that he didn’t have a uniform and his credentials were cheesy aviator sunglasses, a tin star and a shotgun, I was understandably reluctant. It wasn’t like I was going anywhere. I had no desire to leave my car behind and go out walking the hillbilly highway alone unless I had to …and Bubbacop wasn’t convincing me he was a good alternative.

  After answering the same question three times with a pointed “NO” Bubbacop busted out the driver window with his shotgun, popped the lock, threw his rifle into a sling over his shoulder and proceeded to drag me out of the car. He really didn’t care what parts of me he had to grab to keep a grip because I put up a fight. I landed a few blows with my feet before he got me by my hair and just pulled. When he got me to out, he took me by the throat and slammed me against the side of my car. That took some of the fight out of me, but made me angry enough to kick him in his belly button. He didn’t think kindly on that and gave my neck a proper squeeze. He grabbed the wrist that wasn’t clawing at the hand around my neck and got so close I could smell his swamp ass and the beef jerky on his breath. Then, as I thought I was going to pass out, he backed off and I dropped to the asphalt.

  From the ground, the cop on horseback seemed like God from on High. I couldn’t make out his expression or even much of his face. I just remember the hat, the rifle held up like a knight’s lance, the worn shine of his boots and the dried blood matting the coat of his horse and its shoes.

  He said, “I am Trooper Dale Hodkins, Pennsylvania State Police. You are in a mandatory evacuation zone and will be relocated pending the outcome of this emergency. Please collect only essential items you’re your vehicle and accompany Deputy Reeber to our mobile processing station.” I remember that’s exactly what he said and how he said it – so mechanical and so clear - I imagine he’d been saying it all day to everyone he met, everyone like me too stupid to realize this wasn’t just a traffic jam. I was wondering what they had seen on their way up the highway when Trooper Hodkins added one last point. “At this time Deputy Bubbacop will conduct a preliminary superficial examination to ensure you are not infected.”

  Bubbacop pulled me back to my feet, spun me around and ordered me to put my hands on the top of my car. The police horse huffed and grumbled impatiently behind me as other deputies walked by. The trooper asked me my name. I had to repeat it three times because the first two times I tried to answer, Bubbacop put his hands somewhere on me. He asked me other questions and I guess the trooper was writing it all down because Bubbacop gave up and just repeated my answers louder. I spelled some things out for them and I know he recorded the wrong spelling, but my mind was occupied with the terror of being completely out of control. This asshole was far too enthusiastic about wrenching my arms to see if I had bites or sores, any sign I’d been infected. He checked my neck and shoulders, then my legs and feet. Fortunately I had on a short-ish skirt so he could see that nothing had been gnawing on them. I have a feeling that if Trooper Hodkins hadn’t been there, the exam would have been more thorough and I would’ve had to kick the bridge of his nose up into his brain. When he was done, he turned me back around to face the trooper and told me to stand still. He took a picture of me with a cell phone camera, punched a couple of buttons and then flashed me his yellowed culture dish of a smile.

  Trooper Hodkins turned his horse north again and they started off. Bubbacop kept smiling. He had one of those deep, ridiculous Pennsyl-tucky redneck accents. “Now that we got you all documented, let’s take a walk.” He looked at me like I was the kind of girl he’d flash dollar bills at while they were working the pole down at the roadhouse. He added “Aint gonna cuff you. You want to run off now, ain’t my problem.”

  His 2-way radio crackled with static, scaring the crap out of me. Someone on the other end mentioned that they needed to wrap things up for the night and that there were “hostiles” spotted in the woods somewhere nearby. Shortly after that, gunfire started off in the distance. The deputies I saw heading up the highway were coming back quickly, some with people who looked just as confused and scared as me.

  It was getting later and cooler by the moment. I brought my night bag with me and – for some stupid reason – made sure my car was locked up. I turned to see Bubbacop already heading south and it was pretty clear he didn’t care if I followed or not. At his pace, w
e caught up with some of the other folks I recognized from the traffic snarl.

  The air was oppressive and thick. The road smelled like burning plastic and oil and it burned a little as I took it into my throat and nose. After a while I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. I pulled my jacket out of my backpack and, instead of putting it on, held it up to my face. None of this seemed to bug Deputy Bubbacop. He just kept moving, past burned out cars, piles of abandoned clothes and junk, around debris and twisted metal… I was so tired and sickened by the air that I didn’t spend a lot of time taking in the scenery. I just tried to keep from cutting open my legs or tripping on things.

  I don’t know how long or how far we walked, but I remember the sound of gunfire in the distance… infrequent at first and random from any direction in the woods and hills around us. We passed cars turned on their sides or rolled down the embankment, camping gear on the median and shoulder... I imagine that some folks tried to keep the road clear earlier in the day. The further south we walked, the more people we encountered and the more trash we found along the road.

  I was sick to my stomach from the fumes... probably the stress and the lack of food or water... the next hour is hazy. I followed Bubbacop's winding path through wrecked or abandoned cars and trucks. He didn't really pay attention as he rushed through but I took careful notice of anything like puddles of oil, sharp edges of twisted metal and when other deputies appeared from around cars.