Luckily, Frog had spent time in Portland when he was younger, so he was able to navigate the truck through the suburb streets through Tigard and into Portland. It was a slow ride because of all the abandoned cars on the main roads. The truck didn’t have GPS, so Frog had to remember which streets went which way.

The scariest part was driving through the actual city. We had to take it slow because none of the streets were clear. The dead were everywhere, and if they heard the truck, they made their way right for it. Frog was worried that if we didn’t get to a main road, we might get stuck in a dead end somewhere and have 1,000 of those things on our ass. Charles hopped in the bed of the truck with his pistol to guard us.

This was fine until Frog made a wrong turn and we ended up right in between a group of about 15 of them and no real way of backing up safely. The brakes on the truck were squeaky, and this got the attention of the walkers. They began to come towards us, and Frog quickly tried to turn us around. That’s when Charles did the craziest thing, he grabbed a can of corn from our dufflebag and he jumped out of the back of the truck. He ran over to a parked Prius and smashed in the window with the can. The car alarm went off and drew the attention of the zombies, who were now shuffling at the new noise. Charles ducked down and ran back to the truck just as Frog got us turned around.

Note to self: Zombies look like they can communicate with each other, they somewhat stick in groups, and they are attracted to loud noises over movement.

About an hour later we finally reached the Rose Garden…

The FEMA camp was destroyed.

We couldn’t get too close because there were over 1,000 zombies swarming the tents. It looked like a war was waged here from all the bodies on the ground. I could see several National Guard Hummers scattered around, as well as what looked like a makeshift campsite just next to the medical tents. Charles said that it must have been where the survivors were staying when they came here. I asked him what he thought happened here, and he told me “I don’t know”. Frog figured that someone who was bitten slipped past the check point and infected the whole crowd. Charles disagreed and pointed to a big portion of the fencing that had been pushed down. He figured that it where the zombies pushed down the gate and entered the camp.

We didn’t stay much longer after that.

I asked Charles where we’re going next, and he shrugged. The FEMA camp was the only plan he really had. We all agreed that it would be best to keep going north. Its 300 miles between Portland and Seattle, and maybe they are having better luck than this dead city…?

We took shelter in an abandoned motel in Jantzen Beach, and decided that we were going to cross the Columbia river tomorrow.

