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.