From the journal of Marie Costa, May 3

May 3, 2017

The plan went down, just not quite as planned. Frank teamed up with Andrew and Will worked with Alex, that way, there was someone who was experienced on each team.  The signal was given and they all started out at the same time, but did not get to the doors that way. The rest of us spread out around them with out make shift spears and took down the undead that came at us.
The problem happened by the deli, a group of undead, that we hadn't anticipated, came around the corner from the bakery department and the people protecting Frank and Andrew were almost overwhelmed. We only had enough people for two of the two man pallet jack teams and two teams of five to protect them.
The group of undead from the bakery had seven in it and the protectors were hard pressed to keep them back. Then a couple came down the frozen food isle and added themselves to the hungry undead trying to munch on our pallet jack team.
By then, our group had completed our part by pushing the stack of pallets to block their doors and we heard the call for help from Lisa, who used to work in the dairy department. We turned our attention to getting to the other team and found at least eight zombies between us and them, then we went to work. We made good time and got to the others to find they had used some of the display cases to make a partial wall between them and the undead. They were trying to take them out, but the cases were pretty wide and some of the make shift spears were pretty short.
Will motioned for them to not draw attention to us and we snuck up behind them. It didn't take too long to take them all out and only with the last two did they even realize that we were behind them.
Frank and Andrew maneuvered their pallet stacks into place and we all turned around to go back and get a pallet of canned good to put behind each stack of pallets. Behind us, on the other side of the display cases, there were another six undead trying to get to us. We took them out and pushed the cases out of the way of the pallets and made it to the back. Then we took a short rest before doing it all over again with the pallets of cans. This time, we only ran across two undead and easily took them out.
Once the doors were blocked, we started a sweep of the entire store in teams of three, looking for any stuck or hidden undead or anyone that was still alive. We found three people still alive, Jackie in the pharmacy, Isabella in the office and Jorge in the deli storage room. We also found seven more undead, three in the employee break room, one in the mens restroom, one in the bakery proofer, one stuck in the freezer and one at one of the registers.

The one at the register, Mark Grundel, was the former store director and he had been eaten to the bone on all his limbs and his abdomen was just an empty cavern. His limbs no longer worked and he had been spread out on the conveyor belt like a sacrifice, unable to move more than waving his arms of bone still attached to his body by thin strips of muscle and tendon. When I looked at his face, at first I thought he was wearing a mask. But then I realized that I was looking at his skull showing through where his skin had been eaten away.
We now had the store secure and we had more people to work with. The rest of yesterday was spent resting and eating. We had a small party to celebrate our victory over the undead. Tomorrow, we will have to make plans for the future, but today we celebrate.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.