Boredom and its dangers

Tyler Collins
South Atlanta QZ/ARTCC, GA, US

I remember once reading about the twelve common causes of on-the-job accidents. One of those causes was complacency.

In a chemistry lab, you had to make sure you followed procedure precisely every time. At best, a mistake would land you in your PI's office explaining why the results don't match (especially in nanomaterials, literally everything you do matters). At worst, you were putting people in the hospital. There are no more hospitals out here, only survival of the fittest.

Which is why I was surprised when not one but three instances of complacency appeared in one week, and it nearly cost us.

Instance 1: We got a call on Tuesday from the QZ to 'check out' a report of smoke from a building a few miles from us. I don't understand the reasoning behind the request at all: there are twelve of us, all here for the sole purpose of protecting the building and keeping the radios up. We're not a rescue service. I have some speculation on why we were sent, but I won't get into it now. Point is that I think they're getting complacent about our bloodless operations--we haven't had a casualty in weeks--and now we're doing errands? Someone was being awfully brave behind their desk.

So I went with four of the National Guard guys and we crossed 19-41 (still rather high in groaners, but we got past by using the SR 20 overpass) over past the race track. The track was used as an emergency triage point by GEMA during the early parts of the outbreak. They weren't so careful about screening people, though, and the whole thing collapsed. Luckily there are fences holding most of them in with a lot of equipment blocking line of sight. We stay out of that nest.

A few miles and turns later, we found a burning shack behind a house on Steele Road. We didn't see anyone, living or dead, around. Complacency instance 2 occurred at this time, but we'll get to that.

Complacency instance 3: Sean (Shawn? I don't actually know the spelling), a big burly guy, snatched his crowbar and walked up to the shack. He pried open the door, building still burning, mind you, and out tumbled a groaner. It surprised the heck out of Sean, who dropped the crowbar and fell backwards.

The groaner grabbed his boot and, in a fit of surprise, Sean drew his sidearm and shot the thing in the head. Under normal circumstances, he'd have been fine just pushing the thing's head with his boot until he retrieved the crowbar, or better yet waiting for one of us to kill it. Instead, he used the loudest noisemaker we have, a semiauto pistol.

At exactly this moment, more groaners came out of the shack, some of them on fire. Undead people are scary enough, but undead people on fire are a new level of Bad Ways to Get Killed. Sean got to his feet in time and backed away from them enough to give us a clear line of fire. All four of us lit them up (by this point, we'd already blown the silence so it was pointless to hold off).

Instance 2 then decided to bite us in the ass. We had not set up any sort of perimeter or pre-planned an escape, nor had we cleared the house and the woods around it. By the time the last burning groaner fell, we were cut off from our bikes by a number of them from the house.

Our solution, of course, was to shoot our way out, at which my companions are quite good. Other groaners were shufflign out of the woods near us, maybe thirty total. We cleared up to the bikes and got the hell out. it was a dead-end street, so we had to go back the way we came, including through undead that were heading towards all the sound we made. That was anything but fun and with all the weaving around to find the right roads back to 19-41, it took us over two hours to get back.

Fun fact: while the bike might be a very difficult mount to control one-handed while braining zombies with a camping shovel in the other, I would like to think I got somewhat good at it by the end.

My ears are still ringing and I'm shaking like a leaf from the post-adrenalin shock. Sean's shaking worse, but he's joking again. That's a good thing.

His complacency nearly got himself killed but I don't think he, or us, will make a blatant mistake like that again. As for the Commandant and his staff, if they suggest a rescue again I might hit them with a shovel instead.

It was a relatively uneventful week, otherwise. Stay safe, everyone, and stay vigilant!