May 22

I woke up suddenly with a feeling a that I was falling. Fortunately, it was only one of the those awkward sensations and I was relieved to see that I was still very safely in the tree. The sun was up, but just barely and the morning air was crisp.

I dug around in my pack and fished out a Snickers bar and a bag of chips. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I had devoured them both. I wanted to ration my supplies, but I couldn't help eating another candy bar and what claimed to be a fruit danish.

I also drank the last of the water I'd been carrying. I'd drunk quite a bit during my hike yesterday. More than I had intended to, actually. But I figured there had to be a creek or a river somewhere nearby. I'd just fill up then.

The climb down from the tree turned out to be more difficult than the climb up. I was sore from the day before and cramped from by unusual sleeping position. By the time I dropped the last few feet to the ground, I was ready for a good stretch, letting out a satisfied grunt as I did.

I was startled to hear my grunt echoed by something a short distance away. I couldn't see anything through the trees, but my first thought was that a bear had probably been attracted by the scent of my food. I was lucky it hadn't found me early and climbed the tree with me.

I'd never been around bears before, but I seemed to remember hearing about bear attacks on TV. You were supposed to make noise, so you don't spook it, right?

"Hey, Hey" I called out, feeling pretty stupid. What the hell do you say to a bear? "Hey Bear, I'm over here, but I'm going to leave now"

I started walking, straining my ears to hear anything. The wind was blowing through the trees, making it hard to tell what, if anything was moving.

"Okay, bear, you're really freaking me out," I called out. I took the shotgun from my back and held it in a firing position, my finger not on, but near the trigger. Would a shotgun even stop a bear? Maybe it would be enough to scare it off. Maybe it would just piss it off. I didn't know, but it felt better having it in my hands.

I was so tensed up expected a snarling bear to attack me at any minute that I was totally unprepared for the human hand the grabbed at me as I passed an evergreen tree. Its grip was tight, but I was able to twist away, stumbling backwards as I did. I managed to keep my feet, but I was off balance when the man came toward me.

He was a horror to look at. Clearly infected with something, his skin was covered with open wounds and eyes had the same blotchy appearance as the woman who had chased my car in Iowa. But as bad as she looked, this guy was worse. It was hard to believe he could be up and moving as bad as he looked. But he was moving and coming right at me.

"Look mister, you need to stay the hell away from me," I said raising the shotgun to my shoulder and taking a few more steps back.

The man didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he didn't react in any way I could tell.

"Stay the fuck back or I will shoot you," I shouted, but the man kept coming.

Trying to back away I was losing my footing. The ground was just too uneven. I almost fell as the man closed the distance between us. I pulled the trigger and the thunderous boom of the gun shattered the mountain calm.

I'd not wanted to kill him so I aimed low. The shot was a solid hit to the leg and I could see the wound from the six feet of distance between us. I shook my head in disbelief as he kept coming at me. He didn't even flinch.

I pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again, this time hitting him in the shoulder. The impact of the slug spun him away from me and he stumbled to the ground.

"Look man, we've got to get you down to the city," I was saying. "I'll help you, but you've got to chill out."

Suddenly the man lurched and started to get back to his feet.

"What the hell?" I exclaimed out loud. This couldn't be happening. I was just about to raise the shotgun for another shot when I heard a cracking noise. The man's head snapped back and his body slumped to the ground.

"Put the gun down before you hurt someone who isn't already dead," a voice called out from the cover of the trees. I spun around but couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"You don't look like DMA so I'm giving you benefit of the doubt," the voice continued. "But if you don't put the gun down now, you are on your own."

Quickly weighing my options I lowered the gun and placed it on the ground near my feet. From off to my left, a man dressed all in camouflage emerged from the trees. He had an assault riffle trained on me from the moment I first caught sight of him.

"Were you bit?" he asked without any other introduction. "Did you get bit?"

"No," I stammered, still in a bit of shock over everything that had just happened. "He grabbed my jacket, but just with his hand."

Lowering his rifle a bit, the man stepped forward and gave me a brief looking over. Seemingly satisfied, he quickly scooped up my gun and started to walk back the way he had come.

"Let's get out of here," he said. "You're shooting is probably going to bring more."

"More what?" I asked, still standing where I had been.

"More of those," he said, jerking his thumb at the corpse laying on ground. I quickly fell in behind him.

We walked for a while in silence. The pace was quicker than the one I had set for myself and the weight of pack was becoming an uncomfortable burden. I became particularly annoyed, when I realized we were looping back around.

"You lost?" I asked.

"No."

"So why are we going in circles?"

"Look, let's not forget that I just saved your life back there," he said, stopping and turning around to face me. "That being said, I have to make sure your antics don't have any DMA search teams on our tails. Or worse, a pack of zombies."

"Zombies?" I asked. "These people are on bath salts or something?"

"Bath salts? Bath salts?" he shook his head. "Did he look like a drug addict to you. just what the hell do you think is going on? A nationwide drug overdose? It's the big one, man. The shit has hit the fan and the dead are walking."

My brain reeled at the thought. I'd only seen a few zombie movies, but from what I remembered it generally didn't go well for anyone involved. I was still thinking about the implications of what I'd been told, when my guide stopped near a small stand of evergreens. He spread the trees to reveal was looked to be a manhole in ground.

"I'll let you go down first," he said. "Just watch your head at the bottom, the passage is only five feet high."

I climbed down the rungs set into the smooth walls. I must have been about 20 feet down when I reached the ground. The passage extended away from the ladder and aside from the dim light shining in from above, it was totally dark. I could hear feet on the rungs above me and started down the passage, feeling my way along the walls. They were cold and smooth to the touch, like painted metal.

The passage was straight with no curves or doors that I tell and ran for a few hundred passes until I stopped by a door. I fumbled in the dark for a handle and eventually found what was basically a wheel in the center of the door. I turned it and pushed the door in.

After being in the dark, my eyes dazzled at the light coming from the room within. It reminded me of the crew quarters of ship or some spartan Japanese efficiency apartment. It was packed full of supplies, but we were the only people inside.

"Welcome to my humble abode," my host said, closing the door behind us. "What brings you to Montana?"

With the door closed, the room suddenly seemed very small. It also occurred to me that I was now essentially trapped with a stranger.

"I'm supposed to meet up with a friend," I lied. "He's got a place around here."

"Is that so?" he asked. "What's his name, maybe I know him?"

I didn't know his name. His Facebook profile listed him as Danny Doomsday, but I knew that wasn't really it. Still, it was all I had.

"He goes by Danny Doomsday," I said. My host just nodded his head, but I thought a saw him suppress a smile. What the hell was this guy getting at?

 "I wondered if anyone from the web would come this way," he said, opening the door on a refrigerator and taking out a couple beers. He handed one to me. "I'm Danny."

I looked at him squarely. The face before wasn't anything like the ones in the profile pictures I'd seen. He must have seen the doubt in my eyes.

"Look, only about half of what I put on the web was real," he said. "Obviously, I live in Montana and I have a bug out shelter. A lot of stuff I just made up to entertain myself. Jesus, I never thought I'd be living in a rat hole at the end of the world."

"You seem like you've done alright," I said. "Better than others from what I've seen."

I gestured to the room, the supplies and the lights. "I haven't seen electricity in days."

He nodded and took a long drink from his beer. "I've got some solar panels scattered around. It's enough for this place, but not enough to be too noticeable. The goons haven't found me yet, so I'm doing something right."

"Goons?" I asked. "Is that what you call ... them?"

"No, I call them zombies," Danny said. "The goons are the DMA. Those bastards would loot this place and burn me out if they could find me."

"What's the deal with that?" I asked. "They burned my cabin to the ground."

"You're lucky you got out then," he said. "Near as I can figure, things started out slow with a few cases of some kind of superflu. I heard a report of it in Pakistan a few months ago. Then it was in Germany and then the U.S."

I was listening, but I wasn't sure I was believing. How could a flu bug bring people back from the dead? It was beyond everything I knew about death.

"They did a good job of keeping it under wraps, but word startd to get out," Danny was saying. "That's when I put out the A.P.B. and told everyone to get out of Dodge. I see you listened. It wasn't long after that that the Internet grid went down. Then communication satellites started going dead."

How was that even possible? Who had that kind of power?

"I guess the governments realized they were losing control. They started declaring martial law and trying to gather people together, but it was too late. The virus was out and spreading. It only took a few days and it was everywhere," Danny finished his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "That's when the black trucks and black helicopters started showing up. Their basically U.S. troops mixed in with NATO and UN forces. Some sort of apocalypse protocol from what I've seen. They're trying to control an out of control wildfire, so they kill anyone who's infected and take the rest to the collection centers, which is a joke."

My gut feeling had been to avoid the centers and now I more glad than ever that I had. I looked down at the beer getting warm in my hands and took a long deep drink.

"Why are the centers bad?" I asked. "It looks like they're guarded and safe."

"Guarded maybe, but I've been watching the one down in Missoula," he said shaking his head. "People are still getting sick in there. They don't have a handle on it. I'll show you more later, but we need to let things settle up there first. The goons patrol the mountains and the zombies seem to be attracted to noise."

Danny fished out another beer and offered me one as well. I held up the half full bottle in my hand and shook my head. He looked at me like he was trying to remember something.

"You're from Kansas, right?" he asked. "What did you do...before?"

"Missouri," I corrected. "I drove a forklift at a TV dinner factory."

"That's cool," he said. "I ran a bobcat for a construction company."