Humans, man.

Here’s my lesson to impart: don’t confront a raging, zombie feeding racist asshole unarmed, because metaphysical protection you conjure yourself will do nothing for internal bleeding. I can still walk, but I probably shouldn’t.

Joel, you still have my power of attorney. My safety deposit keys should be taped under my desk – this will’s at the bank.

This is my signoff. The only way out is to take this guy with me into the Mississippi and hope we both get consumed as an offering to the River Father. Moll-Dolly showed me the back door, the place at the furthest back of the Wabasha caves where they’ve kept the corpses of old gangsters buried.

There’s been zombie in the groundwater for the last two years. Those corpses are infected, and the only thing holding them back has been the ghosts, the hell gods and that door.

All those angry, mobster zombies, slow and fast, will force us both to the river.

From there it won’t take much to get him at gunpoint. We can’t have this guy running loose in the world, even if he only kills once a year. Killing for biology is just biology. This guy kills for hate and pleasure, and the recidvism rate for that is terrible.

Pete says he’ll meet me on the riverbanks and we can go together to the boatman at the Styx.

By all the Gods, I hope that’s true.

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Pete and the female ghost, who I’m calling Moll-Dolly since she won’t tell me her name, both confirmed I saw what I saw. This guy just grabbed another human being and shoved him headfirst into a zombie, held him by the neck while the zombie bit him. As far as I can tell, it’s because this guy was running from a zombie while brown.

He actually forced the guy to get bit, when he had a loaded shotgun and there was no reason to do so. I knew some evil creep would come up with this, but no – not cool. And of course I get to see it firsthand. Not OK to kill the guy, and not OK with me to waste a perfectly edible zombie.

I don’t care what his explanation is – I was too far away to tell, but I’m pretty sure I just saw a hate crime committed via zombie. Which makes me wonder how many of those bodies I saw were from him, especially since zombies don’t do great around water.

Also, sight I hope never to see again: the ghost of an old friend making out with the ghost of a woman who chronologically should have been his great grandmother.

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It’s really quiet on Wabasha, and I admit to “spotting” a lot of activity to avoid conversation with this jackass. I’m pretty sure the river slows most zombies down – the water confuses the smell or brain radar or something. I watched a few try to cross a bridge when Pete was alive; most couldn’t make it across because their bodies fell apart or a sniper shot them before they could get to the other side.

Today I saw some body parts floating down the river when I peeked over the bridge on the way down here. It’s actually been quiet enough I’ve been sitting and enjoying my first real sunlight in a year, while Swastika Fuckwit scouts out down the road and see if there are any living people nearby who need shelter. I’m still stunned no one has been using the caves, but the ghosts may have had something to do with them disappearing from human perception. They do that sometimes.

Hey, it looks like he found somebody. And he found a zombie.…And that didn’t end well, two bodies in the river.

If I saw what I think I saw, I have a damn good reason to kill this guy. But I’m sure as hell not going to eat his brains. If you are what you eat, that’s like a twenty point IQ drop.

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I hate this guy. He smells evil, and he proudly showed my his swastika tattoo. He said “That’s right, baby!” to my sarcastic “Seig heil.”

Even the Cthulhoid god who hangs out in the back room isn’t evil, he just doesn’t give a damn because we all look vaguely like ants to him.

With this idiot, there’s a whole lot of chest-pounding crap, and the ghost of some moll sidled up to me and told me where all the poisonous stuff used for cleaning is hidden. She even had an estimate for how fast each one could take him down.

Quote of the day: “Sweetie, it’s the 21st century. A girl can take out a mook herself if she wants.” From a dead woman who might have had a smoke behind a back fence with my grandmother.

God, that would be satisfying. I do think a great slogan would be “Arm the women, they know who deserves to be shot.”

But no… stupid moral center. Maybe karma and a zombie will take care of this ass, he’s been “patrolling” up and down the block like a seven year old playing soldier.

My instincts about people have always been pretty good, but this is a crisis situation. I’m not going to off anyone without a damn good reason. I couldn’t even off my zombified boyfriend until he bit Pete and looked like he was going to go for me. Of course, Mike was just feral. This guy’s a full on jackass.

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There was a loud noise at the front of the cave, and there’s this guy looking to hide here. The ghosts don’t want to let him all, and I’m sure has hell not taking him to the back room.

I’m not entirely thrilled – but it’s more shotguns, more ammo, and the coffeeshop at the top of the cave has food and coffee so me and the ghosts can all deal. While I’ve heard zombies shuffle by on the street outside, I haven’t noticed any even trying to get in (too much effort?) My 30 second personality read isn’t favorable, but you can’t always choose your company. And he’s human, and alive, and obviously not bit. I may have to repeat this a few times.  And there’s no non-awkward way to explain that I may decide to take a chunk out of him myself, and I’m none to eager to end up on the business end of a shotgun myself.

I’m not sure what the limits of my zomboid viruses are, and I’m not looking to find out. If zombies mutated last year, they probably did this year, too, and I’m way up on mutations lately.

Oh Christ, does that guy have a swastika tat on his forearm?

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This makes me almost cherish the time I spent boring myself out of my mind reading the cover to Tuesdays with Morrie.

I realized I haven’t picked up my wand in two years until it just got shoved back into my hand by what I’m assuming is an especially strong ghost. I haven’t done a single ritual – not so much as a banishing or house blessing – since that day in the IDS tower with Pete. Which might explain why I felt so lopsided marching right over some magical seal and doing a whole hell god invocation. And it was pretty comfortable, which for me is one more check in the “red alarm” box regarding my physical health. The same soul-eating bastard is pretty cool once you realize you’ve become the carrion dog to his leftovers. And it explains the vulture-headed thing. Once you wake one of these Cthulhoid guys up, there’s no going back to sleep – you know how it can take us five minutes to half an hour? Put that time on a millennial scale. I’m guessing from what was explained to me that the crap in my blood is also not going to just go away with a nettle infusion.

Thanks to our chat I’ve got some parameters on what I am now. But medical science and human beings won’t like it. And I think I can eat normally if I want to, normal human food with a lot of servings of steak tartar and kidney and liver. I might come to like traditional English cooking, now that I’m a consumer of the dead. But I’m not sure. If zombies only break loose once a year, I might not be able to live normally or come up with a new normal at all.

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So that wasn’t a cheap conversion tactic. It was a password, sort of. I’m in the deepest recesses of the caves, so far back that usually only employees get in here. There’s this Irish guy, O’Banion, who’s asking me for the bathwater. What the hell does he mean, bathwater? The décor in here is very art deco, the last time I saw something like this was when a Masonic lodge let some local Pagans use their space for a Mardis Gras party.

Oh, bathwater is that hooch – I guess with alcohol’s evaporation rate he still might get some kind of jolly out of that. I wish I had my camera, this place is so cool. And the people all talk with that old American English, that sounds so much smarter and hotter than how we speak now. This guy is looking very disappointed I’m not the sort of lady to carry a flask.

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I always wanted to go on the Wabasha Caves haunted tour, but never had the right combination of money or time. It had not occurred to me that I could easily enjoy a tour, guided by those that haunt the caves. But here I am, stomach full of zombie and surrounded by ghosts. One of them has kindly used a trail of ectoplasm to give me freakishly good wireless down here, the kind you’re not supposed to get in a cave.

It’s mostly men down here, a few women, all dressed like it’s the 1920s. I love everything about that era. I could have a good time down here for a long time, away from the world, only coming out to snack on a disembodied leg. I’m flanked on both sides by a couple of spirits that are quite muscular, wearing fedoras and pinstripe suits. I’m amused – I’m under spirit guard. It still beats the hell out of quarantine. What are they going to do? Riddle me with ghost bullets? Can I at least get some ghost hooch?

Pete keeps repeating to me, “Tell them you’re Catholic!” I’m remembering a few times in college where Pete wanted to strangle me for being dense about something, and I have a feeling right now he’s wishing he were corporeal enough to do so.

I guess I better try it, and see what happens.

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I’m huddled under the bridge that crosses Wabasha Street now, in view of the former Coca-Cola plant/Llewellyn Publishing building. I don’t know what was there, but I’m guessing it’s not good since I can see the large windows are almost all broken.

Joel and I agreed to split: he thinks the world is better off with me in it which is why he sprang me from quarantine, but we don’t know what’s happening to me, or what I might do – I’m leaning towards it being of the “not good” variety.

I’m more confident than ever Joel can make it just fine without me. When my skin welted at the touch of a little rock salt, we realized that whatever I am now, I probably shouldn’t be.

It’s not very pretty, but … zombies taste good to me. Really, really good. They’re even starting to smell good. And while I can handle the smell of my zombie repellent, it’s…disinteresting. Like I know I can’t find what I want there: a good, fresh, active, angry zombie with gurgling blood.

If that makes you uncomfortable, imagine how I feel. Hunting and eating zombies has worked its way into my biology. So not cool.

There are few silences more awkward than the silence of a friend who finds you or sees you standing in the middle of a pile of twitching bodies. Even if the bodies were already dead before you ravaged them. I can’t ask Joel to try to get used to that.

I stood one one side of the rock salt circle, and Joel stood on the other, and after a moment, we agreed that what he’d just seen was probably wrong and that there’s likely nothing either one of us could do about it.

While I’ve felt no cravings for humans, when Joel put on my Zombie Repellent I felt the urge to avoid him – like he’d be a real bummer to be around – and some stirring of my mind thought “And dammit, no zombies!”

I didn’t want to be around Joel, and Joel really didn’t want to be around me. So he gave me a shotgun and a bottle of aesfoetida, and Pete gestured for me to follow him.

Speaking of, Pete is doing yet more gesturing for me to follow him down this street and deeper into Wabasha Avenue.

You can catch the real Diana on Twitter.

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We are on the bottom floor of a parking garage in Lowertown Saint Paul. Pete is insisting we stay there for now, although I can hear shuffling and moaning. I’m pretty sure the parking attendant went down first, although given the density of bars in this part of Saint Paul it could be a zombie of the self-embalming sort. While in theory bars close at 1 am, it’s awfully close together with their 11 am openings around here.

Joel popped the trunk on the Prius and let me see his store of goodies:
Three shotguns, a whole bunch of bullets, huge bottles of aesfoetida and rock salt and, Gods bless him, the best absinthe looting can buy. He’s informed me that the absinthe isn’t all for drinking, but he snuck off one of the little sample bodies. Call me a wuss, but I don’t like it so much straight – but I’ll take it.

I’m able to surround the car with aesfoetida, but when I tried to handle the rock salt, it left a burn mark on my hand, and standing in the circle is making me feel really itchy, like I have hives.

You can catch the real Diana on Twitter.

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