Episode Details

Campfire Taleby EmpyrealInvective
I will always remember the rag man, not necessarily for the rags of clothes he wore, his thousand-yard stare, or his way of talking like he was the only one listening, but for the story he told me. You see, stories have become our method of introducing ourselves. The other questions we would normally ask have been rendered useless. There is little point in asking what your job is when you have no job. There is no point in asking what their favorite TV. show is when there is no longer any real functional electrical system. There is no point in asking about their family, you get the point.
I have no real method of telling time anymore, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would assume at least two years have passed since it all started. It feels longer than two years since those undead things came along and began to gnaw down on population to nothing but bones. When they came, the modern world was lost. Generators fell into disrepair and we were plunged back into what felt like colonial times. I was a huge fan of movies, which unfortunately were one of the many casualties of the undead. I have since picked up a new hobby. You could call me a collector of sorts; I gather stories.
I collect all sorts of stories, but the ones that intrigue me most are people's experiences from the zombie apocalypse. Those stories are the most appealing to me because everyone has their own unique experience. They usually pertain to what they were doing the day of the initial outbreak. Some are sad, some are funny (Like this one about a girl who had decided to try DMT for the first time in her life and thought the zombies were a hallucination brought on by a bad drug trip for a week straight before realizing that that was way too long to be hallucinating.), but only one has really resonated with me these two years.
I met the rag man in a burnt-out building. I had been moving from place to place looking for somewhere to stay. The allure of the fire he had built was too great. I ventured into the deteriorating building ignoring my fear that I could be walking into an ambush. I just wanted a place to stay for the night where I wouldn’t drift off to sleep in fear that I would be woken up by one of those things gnawing on me.
I found the rag man crouched in front of the fire. He barely acknowledged my presence. Where most would draw their weapon and demand that I identify myself, he merely craned his head up to take a quick look at me before dropping it back down to the crackling fire. I took this as an invitation and sat down near the warmth. It had been the first time in weeks that I was able to warm up my body from the cold night’s air. The crackling and roaring fire brought back memories of spooky campfire tales and roasting smores.
I call him the rag man because he gave me no formal introduction. He was a haggard looking man in about his fifties. His beard looked like a razor hadn’t touched it since the undead started walking around. He was emaciated and in a world where everyone is practically a walking skeleton, saying he was gaunt is no understatement or literary flourish. His clothes had been reduced to rags by months of strenuous activity. It looked like he had bundled up with two or three layers of clothing, but all had been worn down to strips and rags. We regarded each other in silence for a few moments before he began talking without introduction or statement of intention.
He began, “The first few days of the outbreak, we took shelter in a building. It was in that office building where we eked out those first few days. We ate the food that we found in the break room. A lot of people talked about what was happening. The general consensus was that the military was on the way. They had to be, I mean this was America we are talking about. We expected the military resurgence to be quick and effective. We thought of this hellish plague as being something that would be solved i