4.5 - Dusty's Diary Read online

  So the story goes, some terrorist guys got a hold of this new Cordyceps fungus strain. It was already aerosolized to work in the nose spray—transmissible by air. The toe fungus company made sure of that. Then all the terrorists had to do was make the new fungus target something more than toe fungus. They made it target us.

  That was the other common thread in the stories. They all led back to us. They all led back to red lumps and crazy people.

  October 12

  I guess I probably need to explain what a terrorist is. They were kind a problem for us back before the Shroomheads became the only problem.

  Terrorists are kinda like human-sized cockroaches that carry guns, like to blow themselves up, and spend too much time acting like dipshits.

  Well, damn, I guess I probably need to explain what a dipshit is, too, since I keep using that word.

  That’s hard. You know, context and all. I’m guessing if you’re digging this up a thousand years from now, and you’re trying to understand what happened to all of us, and there’s some hard-on back at the office who’s in charge of telling you what it all means, but he’s never gotten his fingers dirty digging through thousand-year-old muck, and he thinks he knows everything anyway, well, he’s a dipshit.

  Dipshit is a pretty general term. As a matter of fact, you’ll find lots of shit in our histories about self-important pricks who are all dipshits. They tell folks they aren’t, but they’re all liars. Whenever you dig up something that lists somebody as a president of anything, a congressman—especially a congressman, anybody who works for the IRS, or preaches to folks on Sunday about giving everything to the church but lives in a big ass house and drives a Mercedes, all those people are dipshits. Our world was pretty much run by dipshits and HOAs.

  Hell, that’s why we’re all dead, and you guys are digging through our petrified garage sale inventory.

  Speaking of digging through our stuff, the last normal person I saw on the outside was the neighbor’s kid. He was always kind of a stoner-head little wanker, spending all of his time playing first person shooters (a type of computer game), surfing porn (he was a teenage boy with an internet connection, of course he was), and walking around the neighborhood dressed like a rapper. The kid had some kind of military-looking rifle. I think maybe it was an AK-47. By the way, terrorists loved that gun. If you dig around here and find a skull with a big nasty hole in it, it might be mine. The hole might be from that kid’s gun. He never liked me because I used to rat him out to his parents when he skipped school.

  I saw him just before I closed the hatch the last time two years ago. If he hasn’t turned Shroom yet, he might shoot me just because.

  October 13

  Word of the day: pornography.

  Allow me to reiterate. I don’t know when this is gonna get dug up in the future, so I’ll explain a little bit about what pornography is before I go on.

  Different cultures throughout history view sex in different ways. Even people living in different countries or different counties see sex and everything else that happens between men and women differently. I won’t be surprised if you, being in the future, have weird ideas about me based on what I’m about to tell you about pornography. You may think I’m some kind of pervert or you may think I’m a prude. Don’t let that taint any other opinions you may develop about the fine Americans of Houston, Texas. People are just weird about sex.

  Definition of Pornography: it’s just pictures, or movies, or stories of naked people, preferably having sex, or sometimes just showing off their naked parts.

  That’s it.

  We’re all schizophrenic here. Everybody wants to see each other naked, but we all pretend like we’re too good for that sort of thing. The upshot of all this talk about sexual mores is that I ain’t got no porn in my bunker.

  I don’t know what I was thinking when I installed my solar panels, had that big-ass cistern buried in my yard, had my plumber buddy Manny tap my bunker’s sewer into the storm drain system, and stored up all those pricey survival meals and vitamins—all that rice, and all those beans. I picked up a bunch of old DVDs at the garage sales so I’d have something to watch on those sweaty, southern post-apocalyptic nights. I read books about preparing my survival bunker and how to package my stores so I wouldn’t wake up one day swimming in my trash. I read articles on the internet and watched TV shows about survival.

  I thought I had a fully stocked, perfectly prepared hole in the ground.

  I never thought about the thing that never gets mentioned in any of that literature or on any of those prepper shows: pornography. Maybe all the people that produced all that information thought they were going to have somebody of the opposite sex with them in the end. I don’t know, I guess I thought that too. You know, at least in my dream of it. My old lady and I split a while back, so I figured my fantasy apocalypse team might include a young stripper from that joint down on the highway. She’d come sashaying up the street looking for food and shelter and comfort. I’d rescue her, maybe let her dampen my shoulder a bit with her tears—for dramatic effect—and then we’d shack up here in the bunker, spending our apocalypse shooting zombies with guns that never run out of ammo and humping more than bored zoo monkeys.

  Sadly, no stripper showed up. It’s just me and my Johnson with no pornography to inspire him to a little DIY relief. Damn.

  Note for future preppers. Don’t forget the porn. You don’t know how necessary it is until you go a couple of years without.

  Oh, DIY definition—Do it Yourself.

  I suppose I could do a better job with the definitions and all. Hopefully, you’ll infer a bit from the context as I go along.

  I spend a lot of time thinking about Mazzy Acevedo. Her and her husband Rollo lived a couple of blocks over across the street from the elementary school. They’re my age, kids out of the house, worrying about having enough money for retirement, and wondering why they never had enough money to take that dream trip to Paris. Know what I mean?

  Rollo and me became buddies because we used to go to the HOA meetings, and we’d be the only two guys asking questions about how they were spending our dues. They were stealing it, but we could never prove it. That’s a long boring story though.

  Now, where was I going before I got off track? Oh, yeah. I went to Rollo’s house one day with an expense ledger that I forced the HOA treasurer to give me. I’d been going over the ledger for days and couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I’m not an accountant. I fix air conditioners and refrigerators.

  Rollo though, he went to college, so I figured maybe he took an accounting course.

  When I got to Rollo and Mazzy’s house there were some extra cars parked in the driveway and a few at the curb—an HOA violation if they stayed there overnight. I knocked on the door, figuring they were having some people over for a barbecue. Nobody answered. I waited a bit and heard people laughing and talking and splashing. I figure they were all in the backyard around the pool, so I went around the house and opened the gate.

  My jaw hit the ground—that’s an exaggerated way to say we’re surprised back in our time.

  Mazzy was standing on the diving board over their swimming pool, naked as a jaybird and making no effort to cover the good parts. Matter of fact, she was proud, spinning around and showing things off to another dozen folks in the pool and on the deck, all naked. I recognized most of ‘em from the neighborhood, folks from the PTA meetings and soccer practice and stuff. They were my kids’ friends’ parents, nudists or swingers or something.

  Nudists and swingers, hmm. I guess I need to talk about what those are. The more I think about it, the more I realize everything I know on the topic I learned from reading Penthouse magazines back in the day. By the way, a Penthouse magazine was an early form of pornography that pretty much became pointless when people realized they could pass around nudie photos on the internet for free. The thing with Penthouse, though, it’s not exactly a credible source.

  So, nudists. Those are folks who like to ru
n around naked all the time. They say it’s because they want to be natural. Everybody else believes they just like to see each other naked. On an interesting side note, I heard once that dudes get sunburns on the ends of their peckers because that’s one part of the human body that will never tan. Sounds painful. I’ll keep my pants on.

  Swingers are folks who like to have sex with everybody despite being married to someone else.

  Married… damn, this is a rat hole. I could on with definitions all day. Let’s get back to what I was talking about.

  Rollo saw me standing there, came over, and said I should go home and get the eventual ex and come back. I told him the eventual ex wouldn’t dig that kind of fun, but the truth is I was kind of freaked out. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Mazzy because she was smokin’ hot. I’ve always regretted not dropping my drawers and jumping in the pool that day.

  Anyways, Rollo asked about the ledger I had in my hands. I told him what it was and where I got it. He started talking about debits and credits with his Johnson dangling in the wind like it was no big deal. I guess it wasn’t, but still.

  A couple of weeks later the pool party came up in conversation while Rollo and me were having a burger at one of those beer and titties joints that were starting to pop up everywhere. He told me the neighborhood was full of swingers. I had no idea. Turns out, every couple who wanted to play got a pretty good-sized rock, painted it white, and put it in the garden by the front porch. Through the years, I saw plenty of the rocks around and occasionally wondered why anybody would want a single white rock laying out in the periwinkles. After that, I always felt kind of left out. Everybody in the neighborhood was having fun, and me and the eventual ex stayed home and watched TV because we were bored with each other and too lazy to screw.

  October 14

  Okay, two things on my mind today.

  No, three.

  I’ll try not to ramble too much, but like I said, I’m not the educated type. Don’t take me the wrong way. I’m not a dumbass. I just, you know, have read books and stuff in the past, and mostly writers sound like they… well, they sound smart. I reread some of what I wrote so far. I think I write like a rambling dipshit. Which led me to an epiphany.

  Definition of epiphany. Hmm. Let me give this a shot.

  An epiphany is what happens when you have a job, and you think, hey man, I like this job, and I think my boss is cool. Then comes that day when you figure out you were wrong about your boss being cool because in reality he’s a self-serving buttplug. Well, that moment when you figure out he’s a buttplug, that’s an epiphany.

  I don’t know if that makes me sound smart, but I hope it does.

  Anyways, the epiphany I just had was this. Maybe guys like me who write with bad grammar and all and sound like what you might think a dipshit should sound like, actually aren’t dipshits. We’re just regular Joes, makin’ the world go ‘round. It’s those fucks who talk and write so smooth and perfect that they make you feel like a dumbass because you don’t. Maybe they’re the dipshits.

  You know what I think is the most important thing I think about dipshits right now? They pretty much fucked it all up for us.

  That was one of the things on my mind.

  I guess sometimes I just get angry about stuff. I’m sorry about that. I’ve been locked in my bunker a long time, with little to do but work out, eat, read, and watch old movies. That, and I think about how good things used to be back when I used to think things generally sucked.

  The other thing on the list of things I was thinking was what if all of us die—normal people I mean—or we all turn into Shroomheads and hump each other into oblivion? There won’t be anybody in the future to dig up my remains and read all of this stuff I wrote. Then I got to thinking even more and realized, hey, humans evolved from monkeys, right? What if another species evolves and takes over the world after we die? What if one day a long time from now a bunch of evolved bumblebees working on a government grant and complaining about the rising price of honey are on an archeological dig and find themselves reading all this shit and wondering what the hell is he talking about?

  I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help those guys out. I don’t speak buzzy-buzz.

  I hope some humans make it.

  Finally, the third thing I’m thinking about is how stir crazy I’m getting, that and the needs of my lonely Johnson. You know, I talked about him a couple of days ago.

  Lonely Johnson and the Four-Hour Erections—might be a good name for a rock band.

  October 15

  Did I tell you how long I’ve been down in my bunker? It’s been damn near two years now since the last time I poked my head above ground.

  I know! That’s like forever.

  This whole Cordyceps thing started about five years ago. I’ll talk more about that tomorrow if I don’t get eaten by a Shroomhead. If there’s no entry tomorrow, here’s why—I think I’ve finally reached the limit of stir crazy.

  Two fuckin’ years!

  I know I keep whining about that, but damn!

  Six months before I locked myself in, the power went out for the last time. Water stopped running, of course, the phone system went down, and the internet poofed out of cyber-existence. My shortwave radio still works. I mean, it seems to. The antenna is still up—I’m surprised it made it through the hurricane. Nothing seems to be wrong with it. I run it on the power from my solar array. I haven’t picked up a signal in a little over a year now. Hell, I might be the last man on earth. Charlton Heston, The Omega Man. Yeehaw!

  I won’t explain who Charlton Heston is. It’s too much trouble, and not worth it at the end.

  Well, maybe I will, a little bit. I used to watch his movies when I was a kid. I especially loved the one about the monkeys with the guns. And I don’t know, maybe he took that one to heart because when he turned into an old man, he spent all of his time trying to tell folks to buy more guns. He sounded authoritative, and he looked good doing it, like one of those congressmen, so he was probably a dipshit. Lucky for me, though, I listened to him. I bought more guns and ammo than I needed. Now I’m alive. I suppose none of my neighbors are.

  Charlton Heston, I love you man!

  What I’m getting at is this: I’m going outside today. I might get eaten by a gang of hungry Shroomheads, but you know what? I don’t care anymore. If my choice is to spend one more day in this fucking bunker spankin’ my wanker tool to half-nipple shots in some PG-13 ‘80’s teen comedy, or get eaten by a Shroomhead, well, I’d rather be dead.

  I don’t care what happens when I get outside.

  I don’t care what I do.

  I just need to rev my heart up by a few beats.

  I refuse to die of boredom.

  Hell, maybe I’ll go out and all the Shroomheads will be dead. Maybe they’ve all eaten each other by now.

  You know what? I don’t care!

  If they’re all dead, then I’ll start bungee jumping off the overpasses. I’ll get me a big Caterpillar and scrape all the abandoned cars off Loop 610, find me a Ferrari in some rich dipshit’s garage, and race it ‘til the engine blows up. One hundred and fifty on Loop 610. If that doesn’t blow my hair back then I may be dead already.

  With any luck, I’ll find some other people out there. With any real luck, I’ll find some nice lady—anybody with a vagina—that will help me with my Johnson problem. And I gotta tell you, right now, I am not picky.

  Hey, you go two years without seeing a flesh and blood woman and see how picky you get, you judgmental bastard!

  All I’m sayin’ is I’m so horny, even Justin Bieber’s skinny, hairless ass might look good if I saw him outside.

  October 16

  Well, here we are, the next day.

  Lucky Justin. He wasn’t outside.

  Lucky me, too. I might never have been able to live down the shame of jaloping that metro-sexual twerp, even if it was only me and him that knew about it.

  Jalop—look it up in the Urban Dictionary i
f you found a copy. In truth, you’ll probably be happier not knowing.

  Back on topic, let me tell you about my little outing. Well, not so little. In fact, it was the biggest thing to happen to me in two years.

  I swear, I’m not a whiner. But two years?

  I’ve got this little periscope thing. I run it up from inside the bunker and I can look in any direction to see what’s outside. Before this afternoon, I hadn’t looked through it in eight or nine months. I’m not really sure why. Maybe I didn’t want to tempt myself with something I knew I couldn’t have—outside.

  I know what you’re thinking. I mean, if you future bumblebee people have spent any time digging through ancient layers of our rusty shit, you know we were crazy for electronics. All of us. I’m no exception. I’ve got closed circuit cameras all over my surface property: a few mounted up on the chimney, on the corners of the house, a few inside, and a couple in the backyard facing the bunker entrance. You know, so I can see—theoretically—anything that might be lurking outside my door before I emerge—I fucking love that word, emerge. It sounds so dramatic.

  Turns out, I lost a wire in a windstorm a while back. That was well after the hurricane—which happened well before I locked myself in, just to give you a better idea of the time line. The windstorm knocked out the connection to my cameras. I was pretty PO’d at the time. Luckily, I had the good sense to install a mechanical backup system to the camera network—a sixteen-hundred dollar bunker option. It’s a periscope. Using it, I can’t see much besides the bushes growing up around the fake, green utility box installed over my bunker hatch. The view was better before the bushes got big.