The next few days fell into a simple routine. Nick would get up with the dawn and make a pot of coffee over the campfire, hand-grinding the beans he’d brought from home. It was a process that took significantly longer than it would have if he’d brought the electric grinder from the kitchen, but he didn’t know how much longer the campsite would have power.

To be honest he’d given a lot of thought to the power grid – more specifically, the nuclear power plants over in Zion. How long would they run? Did the government have enough cohesion to keep engineers there? If not, would they be able to shut down safely?

He was probably being silly. There were probably protocols to avoid a catastrophic meltdown. Right?

And what about in other countries, with less regulation? Had the zombies spread beyond the United States? In almost every scenario he could think of, the pandemic would go global… unless it was something like 28 Days Later, in which case it could be confined to England, or the Omega Man remake where it was just LA. But those weren’t really zombies, and from what little he’d seen on the internet these ones looked like your garden variety flesh-eaters, Night of the Living Dead style… but even that was speculation.

Even then, undead monstrosities came in different flavors. Were they the fast kind or the slow kind? Did they have a pack telepathy, or were they acting en masse through individual volition? Did they have enhanced senses, or could they be fooled with the old “paint yourself in gore and shamble around” trick? Were headshots the only solution, or would dismemberment work?

Man, there were so many permutations. He’d been making a list of options in a little notebook he’d packed, but honestly, field research was the only way to be sure. And for that, he’d have to leave the forest preserve.

Nick did not feel up to that.

So, instead, he’d stuck to routine. After his morning coffee he’d have breakfast. For now that was freeze-dried eggs, but he hoped to get enough of a handle on finding food in the preserve that he’d be able to leave his non-perishables for emergencies. That’s what took up most of each day… exploring the park, trying to find food. He’d brought a field guide on edible plants of the Great Plains region, so he’d grab that and go around looking for edibles. That first day he managed to find a patch of wild onion that supplemented his army surplus MRE dinner, and he did spot a cluster of mushrooms – but he wasn’t feeling quite so brave or desperate as to be able to dig into them.

Yet.

And traps. His Wilderness Survival Guide had a section on building snare traps, so he’d been trying to figure that out. Some meat would probably be good, and the Guide even had a section on how to dress and clean meat, so he’d be able to do that when he caught something.

Occasionally he’d spot another camper – a woman walking her dog, a group of kids wearing scouting uniforms, a jogger or two – and he wondered if they knew what was going on. If they really got it, and whether or not it was his responsibility – or his right – to tell them about the hellscape they’d be walking into once they left the forest preserve. If he had a humanitarian duty to try and get them to stay.

After the incident with the guy on the highway he didn’t feel like trying. But maybe he should? What would he say, though? How would he do it without coming off like a crazy person? Mostly, he just avoided other people. Some things even the apocalypse couldn’t change.

After lunch, or whenever he’d get tired of foraging, Nick would relax at camp with his tiny AM radio. His cell had long ago lost its signal and had been relegated to the status of “pocketwatch,” but he could catch radio signals from the outside world… and what he heard wasn’t very comforting.

“…police action against the riots in Chicago continue, spreading North and West from the Loop…”

“…no comment on shortages leaving store shelves empty. Senate Republicans blame…”

“…decrying a lack of Federal coordination, leaving it up to state Governors to deploy their National Guards…”

Nothing about the dead, or any indication that anything out of the ordinary was happening beyond simple civil unrest.
He didn’t check in often, preferring to keep the dial tuned to the local top 40 station, turning the sound down whenever the DJ would start talking about… anything.

That was it. That was the routine. That was life for the first few days of the zombie apocalypse.