“High Lonesome” – The Gaslight Anthem
It
felt like it had been raining for weeks.
It hadn’t of course. It had only
been a little over a day. Still,
everything was wet. I felt soaked to the
bone. I could deal with pretty much
everything but my socks. On top of being
extremely uncomfortable, I had huge fears about what would happen if I ran with
wet socks for days on end. Blisters. Of that I was sure. But I was also convinced that running with
wet socks for more than 2 days would make my feet begin to rot, and eventually
fall off altogether. I have no idea if
this is actually true, but my mind began to convince me that it was.
The
easy solution was to take off my socks, but this brought up new fears. What if a horde of zombies showed up while I
was sockless? While I had heard that
running barefoot was actually better for the joints, I also knew that my feet
were soft, and would likely end of being cut up and infected within an
hour. Death by zombie sounded bad, but I
could deal with it. Death by foot
infection sounded like a pretty ridiculous way to die. So the socks stayed on.
I
found that the rain brought dangers that were slightly worse than probable
foot-rot: with the ground being softer, zombies tended to make less noise. If I listened, I could still hear them, but I
had to be on higher alert than I had been up to that point. It raised the stress level of an already stressful
situation. I still hadn’t encountered
too many, but all it took was for me to let my guard down for one zombie and
that would be the end of me.
I
learned another very important lesson today, one that may very well save my
life. “Pace yourself.” At one point, I had a handful of zombies
following me. No big deal. But, instead of jogging, or walking at a
brisk pace, I ran full speed. I had
already done this a couple of times with no ill effects. Not so this time. I ran until I felt I couldn’t run
anymore. So I stopped. It was then that I looked to my right and saw
another small swarm of zombies walking in my direction. I was exhausted. I tried to run, but it didn’t work. Luckily for me, they were far enough away
that I had time to catch my breath and was able to jog away before they caught
up with me. If they had been closer, I
would’ve been hosed. From that point on,
I decided that, when possible, I would keep my running to a light-jogging pace,
and always try to stop before I felt like I couldn’t run anymore. Always keep something in reserve. Zombies are slow. I call this “The Barbara Rule”, named after
the character in 1990’s Night of the
Living Dead remake. “We could just
walk right past them,” she proclaimed. I
opted for jogging (I wanted to put as much room between them and me as I
could), but the sentiment remained the same.
Wherever you are, Patricia Tallman, I thank you. Hopefully you have taken your own words to
heart and are surviving this with me.
It’s
just like “Somewhere Out There” from American
Tail. But with zombies. And an actress I’ll likely never meet.
When
I spell it all out like that, it sounds a little creepy.
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