This journal came to me from a woman
who was part of a zombie movie production when the pandemic hit. She
survived to live in a large community that eventually got in contact
with out community.
July 1, 2017
My name is Alanna Morgan. I used to
work on low budget movies doing make-up for horror and zombie movies.
That's what I was doing in the desert in New Mexico when news of the
pandemic hit. The crew all wanted to go home, but our director, Rick
Hathaway, wanted to finish his picture on time, come hell, high water
or zombies. I don't know why. Who would want to go see a new B, or
really D, zombie movie when real life zombies were making an
appearance and the end of the world is here.
That was on March 1st.
Three weeks later, we'd just finished shooting a scene in a barn
where our few survivors were overrun by undead and fought them off to
escape and live another day. I think the crew thought the real
zombies were some of the extras in costume, at least at first. Once
they started attacking and eating people, though, I think everyone
got the message. Our little bubble of safety, from being in the
middle of no where in rural New Mexico, had burst and we were up shit
creek.
I was standing next to the open cab of
one of the big trucks used to haul equipment and props from location
to location. I heard the screams and turned in time to see one of our
production designers go down under four undead, thankfully, she
didn't scream for long. I immediately jumped into the cab of the
truck and closed my door. I turned to the open passenger door and
yelled for a couple of the other make-up artists to get in. Delia,
Lori and Leslie made it into the cab. But Gene and Sabrina didn't
make it. Leslie screamed, like the girl he has always wanted to be,
and slammed the door shut just before the wave of zombies reached us.
I rolled my window down a bit and started yelling for the others,
fighting for their lives, to get in the back if they could.
We ended up getting 27 people from the
250 or so people on set that day into the truck we were in and away
from the carnage. I just drove down the dirt road towards the little
town we were staying in. We could hear the screams for quite a ways
as we drove away, but it did eventually die away. The 40 minutes it
takes to get to town felt like it took hours. I kept seeing flashes
of people I knew getting torn apart and eaten by those things. Sasha,
one of the sound techs, surrounded by a group of them and torn limb
from limb. Lucy, one of the caterers, trying to hold off the undead
with her chefs knife. She did take out one before they pulled her
down and her screams were cut off with a gurgle. Mario, the camera
guy who I was supposed to go on a date with tomorrow night, pulled
off his camera and his throat bit out by one of the zombies before
others started eating his insides while he was still dying.
We pulled into town and my foot slid
off the gas pedal while everyone else just gaped. The whole street
was covered in blood and body parts, some of the towns folk had
reanimated, or at least, what was left of them reanimated. One of
these newly undead things was just the torso, left arm and head. It
was trying to pull itself towards the rumbling truck we were in,
trailing its insides behind it. I put my foot back on the gas and ran
it over. It made this little bump and a small popping sound, like one
of those New Year's party favors that look like a champagne bottle
and you pull the string.
We drove down the four streets of the
town and found the same mess everywhere we went. I made it to the
little B and B I was staying at and the place was a disaster. The
lady and her husband who ran it were torn apart on the front lawn.
There wasn't enough of her left, but he had come back as a torn
apart torso with a head and stumps for arms, waving them around and
growling like the animal he now was. I stopped the truck and got
down, Leslie kept asking me why I'd stopped. I finally told him I had
a couple of pistols in my room and we needed them. I put the
proprietor out of his misery and went to my room, got my pistols and
went back out to the truck.
I told everyone in it to get out and
we had a meeting about what to do. The first thing we decided was
that anyone who had been bit or scratched had to go their own way, or
we could take them out. But they couldn't stay with us. Anyone who
wanted to stay with one of them was free to stay. But anyone who
wanted to come with me and the rest of us. We got out a map and chose
a direction, North. Then we figured out who was staying and who was
going. Of the 27, five were bit, three had scratches and two decided
to stay with their friends. We collected everyone's personal things,
it was least we could do to make ourselves feel a little more stable,
and then we drove into this new world with no destination in mind.
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.
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