Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown

by R. S. Merritt

  We walked towards the activity. About halfway there a familiar barking broke out and a yellow blur bounded towards us. I turned to the side to protect my crotch from being smashed in by the fur ball of love who was trying to climb up on top of me and jump onto Ann. I wrapped my arms around the dog and picked her up so she was looking in my eyes. She licked my face like it was covered in bacon grease. Thinking this may be the last time I ever saw the loveable mutt I let her get away with it. Ann did too. I put her down and we continued our walk towards the vehicles. We were a lot less cool looking now that the big dog kept trying to wind her way between our legs like she was some kind of Yorkie or something. I had seriously seen her less than twenty minutes ago. She must be worked up by the idea of getting in a car.

  As we got closer, I could make out two of the transports were being loaded up with the prisoners we’d helped escape from the Luxor. They were all women and rescuing them had denied the Koreans the reproductive resources they were looking for. On top of it being the absolute right thing to do. The fact that they looked at women survivors as reproductive resources was an excellent reason to go shove that nuclear backpack up their collective asses and light the fuse.

  The women looked like a bunch of ants as they scurried around loading supplies into the back of the transports alongside the Seals. They were loading boxes of MREs and weapons into the big green trucks you used to see driving down the interstate. I saw Ginny and some of the older girls had taken the lead and were telling everyone how to divide up the supplies and vetting out who should drive and all that. I looked at my watch and saw it had been fifty minutes since the Captain had said he wanted us out in an hour. I could barely believe they had managed to get that many females out the door in this little bit of time. Then I remembered most of those girls had spent a good portion of this apocalypse as slaves to the Koreans. They were used to doing what they were told or being taken outside and shot.

  Ginny saw us coming and came over and gave Ann a big hug. She looked at me.

  “I’m going to hug you because I might feel bad if you die or something and I didn’t hug you but you’re a massive jerk and I pretty much hate you right now.”

  “I’ll take it. You take care of these girls and we’ll all meet up again soon. “

  Ginny broke the embrace and drug Daisy with her over to the Humvee she had chosen as her command vehicle. It had a mounted fifty caliber machine gun on top of it. She should be comfortable with that weapon system since we’d driven one just like it halfway across the country. I watched as the elevator came down and Ginny and the rest slowly moved out. When they were all gone I realized my eyes had sprung a leak. I hurried up and wiped off my face and gave Ann a minute to get her eye leaks fixed.

  Game faces back on we hopped into the Hummer we’d been assigned. It felt really weird to have two Seals climb into the back seats versus having Ginny, Reeves and Daisy back there. The faster we beat our way through this mess the faster we could all be reunited. With that thought in mind I clicked the start button over and the Hummer roared to life. I reached over the hump in the middle and held Ann’s hand while we followed the other vehicles in our little convoy out of the hidden base and back into the fray.

  Entry 11: Into the Breach

  We pulled onto the highway. We could see the transports Ginny was leading moving north. We rolled out and headed south then east towards this base that had turned into a death trap. I had heard from Wilson that Reeves and the others were on top of the building still. More Koreans had shown up and were dropping mortars on the other side of the Zombies. This was blowing up Zombies and making them move away from the Koreans as they followed the loud noise from the mortars exploding.

  I thought the mortar thing was pretty clever and made sure to shelve the idea in the back of my head. If I ever got my hands on a bunch of mortar rounds it could come in handy. We’d left in the day so were able to drive relatively fast. We had three Hummers and a transport with us. The large transport has a couple of those hand dolly’s in it and a big one like you use to move around heavy stuff with. We also had a ton of MREs and bullets. We even had rockets which made me extraordinarily happy. We had ground to ground and ground to air so we didn’t have to worry about commercial helicopters being an issue. We had grenades of every shape and size. We had crates of bottled waters.

  There was no doubt in my mind we were doomed to lose that transport vehicle. It was just too full of too much good stuff. Buried under all of the foodstuffs was the nuke. Seals are demolition experts and several of them had advanced training on arming and disarming devices very similar to this one so we should be able to set it off when and where we needed to. They also told us we were probably ok as far as radiation was concerned but that we may want to invest in some lead cups. They seemed to find that funny.

  We weren’t using the radios to try and avoid alerting the Koreans we were coming. I had not gotten any updates on what was going on since we all piled into the Hummer and started rolling towards Fallon. The road was desolated and cold. One nice thing about raiding the military stores was that the clothes were seriously warm. I had kind of gotten used to freezing most of the time we were on the road in the winter. I had been wearing jeans most of the time and random coats. I needed to stop being such a slave to fashion and start shopping at more surplus stores. What these clothes lacked in style they more than made up for in warmth. Not that I cared about the style anyway, I’d just always wore jeans so had kept that up during the apocalypse.

  Up ahead the vehicles started pulling over. I pulled over as well and we all hopped out of the Hummer and headed up to the crowd forming by the Captain’s Hummer. We worked our way up to where the Captain was telling everyone except team leads to get back in their vehicles. The two Seals we were with told us they’d get back to their naps and to let them know who to kill. They went back to the Hummer and Ann and I stayed to listen to what was next. Once everyone had settled down the Captain addressed us.

  “Ok. A few miles up ahead there is Silver Springs which has a big lake and national park. We’re going to ditch the transport there with a seven-man team. If the rest of us die then they’ll be responsible for making sure the nuke gets delivered to San Diego with all of our love. We’ve got an attack helicopter fueled up and hiding out in case we need it. They’ll be making hops to get closer and on target but we’re only going to use them if needed.”

  The Captain looked around and everyone was nodding. It all made sense so far. I hated that we weren’t throwing all of our resources into rescuing Reeves but understood the need to hold back some in case it was needed. Plus, this gave us a fallback if everything went to hell. Things went to hell around us a lot so a fallback was a good thing. I still felt like if we were going to go in we needed to go in hard with everything we had but the Captain was the one with the intel here and they were his men. Once he was sure we all understood and agreed with the first portion of the plan he started explaining what he was thinking should come next.

  “Once we get the reserves off into the woods we’ll keep on going down the road. Wilson has let me know that the Koreans appear to be fully engaged along their front. They’re popping out mortars, waiting a few minutes, then moving forward, hiding and popping out more mortars. They should be at the overturned trailer shortly. Why they’re trying so hard to get to the overturned trailer we have no idea. I do know that if they get there and figure out what is inside of it then they’ll radio that back to their HQ. If their HQ knows a bunch of Seals in this area are carrying around backpack nukes there will be a lot more Koreans up here with guns real soon and it’s going to get impossible to get one of those nukes near their leadership. We need to engage and destroy them before they get anyone into that trailer. My best idea at the moment is kind of along the full speed ahead lines. We drive fast and engage them from the rear while they’re not expecting it. Wilson says there is about fifty of them.”

  Fifty sounded like a lot to me. Considering there would be about fift
een of us. These sounded like they were the Korean special forces guys as well. They were really good at what they did. It also didn’t account for any special forces that Wilson and crew may not have seen. We knew there was a helicopter of theirs hanging out somewhere. Since they were the special forces guys I knew the Captain was hesitant to use our helicopter because they probably had ground to air missiles on them. Driving fast and shooting seemed like the only way to have a hope of stopping them before they made it to the trailer. We moved out and got the transport pulled in and covered up at the state park. Once we were done with that we got back on the road. The Captain reported we had some time left so we didn’t have to kill ourselves driving crazy to get there.

  We had an extra Seal shoved in our Hummer now who had been riding in the transport. He was up in the turret manning the fifty. I saw brake lights up ahead so I slowed down and we all looked down the road towards where a lone Hummer was sitting in the middle of the road. I expected our lead Hummer to open fire but instead they just drove slowly towards the Hummer. I saw figures getting out and walking towards them. I thought I recognized them. I sped up and drove around the Hummer in front of us to where I could now recognize who was coming out of the other Hummer towards us.

  I parked the Hummer and Ann and I got out and walked over towards where Ginny was standing with a big smirk on her face. She was surrounded by five of the girls we had helped train with the rifles. I flinched and turned towards the side right as a furry rocket rammed right into where my crotch would have been. I reached down and rubbed Daisy on the head while staring at Ginny. The Captain had gotten out and was walking over now as well. He did not look amused. Ginny looked at me. I shrugged. She wanted to be a big girl let her deal with it.

  “Hey Captain. We decided since we couldn’t really roll those transports through Reno during the day that a few of us would come help you pull Reeves and Wilson out of the fire. Hopefully, we can do that and be back with the girls before it gets too late. We had more volunteers to come help but I figured we needed to leave some guards. I’m not sure if most of them wanted to rescue Reeves or kill Koreans. What took you guys so long to drive here? I was worried we’d missed you. “

  The Captain sighed. He looked deflated.

  “Well, at least you left the pre-teens behind. Some more guns will help but I’ll tell you right now I don’t really expect everyone to survive this fight. Just know that before you ride into battle. Some of you, maybe all of you, will not be driving away.”

  He let that sink in. None of the women seemed phased by it.

  “Ok then. Once we get closer I’ll call out tactics on the radio. They’re currently bunched up in two groups with cover in front of them but exposed from behind. I’ll want you guys to hit the group on the north side of the road so just be ready for that order. They have mortars and rockets so I expect we’ll lose some vehicles. Each Hummer should plan on getting rid of everyone but the driver and the gunner when I give the command. Steve, you guys hook up with Ginny and attack the north side. They’re pretty exposed so two cars with backup from Wilsons guys sharpshooting should do the trick. The ones on the other side are further out so the rest of us will go after them.”

  We all piled back in our vehicles and moved out. White knuckled, I kept driving. We were in Fallon now and we could hear the occasional muffled boom of a mortar going off. The screams of the damned were in the air. The Captain had us driving slow. He came over the radio and told us to let the passengers out. I stopped and the two Seals in the back jumped out and Ann leaned over the hump and gave me a quick kiss.

  “Drive like you normally do and you’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve been waiting to say that for how long now?”

  “Ever since Abraham told us the plan!” Ann called out over her shoulder while jogging into the weeds on the side of the road. The place looked pretty clear of Zombies. Probably due to the Koreans making so much ruckus with the mortars. They would of course have people looking behind them in case stray Zombies attacked. Those were the people who would very shortly be shooting at me. I rolled down my window and yelled out to my man up in the turret asking if he was ready.

  “Hooyah!”

  That was good enough for me. I slammed down on the accelerator and got out in front of Ginny. They were busy letting one of the Seals climb up into the turret. Ginny was driving the Hummer. The Seal had not seemed super thrilled to be driven into battle by a girl who was only old enough to qualify for a learner permit in most states. He’d sucked it up though. Probably because these guys all seemed pretty crazy and what he was doing was pretty crazy. I fully intended to take most of the fire that would have hit Ginny though. Hence, the rapid accelerating around her.

  I got on the left side of the road staring ahead trying to figure out where the Koreans were hiding on the north side of the road. The Seals in the other Hummers were focused on the south side of the road. They were very much dependent on us to do our job. I had the accelerator at ninety on the crap covered streets. There were dead zombies, blown apart asphalt, multiple skeletons of who knows what and building parts and dirt littering the whole road. We bumped and spun and I just tried to keep us from hitting the other vehicles while searching for our target.

  The radio crackled to life. “About three thousand yards up on your left about twenty feet from the road in the parking lot of what’s left of a gas station. There is part of a shell sign still. That’s your target Steve’s group. Hit it hard. We’re going to go right past you to the other group that’s larger and about five thousand yards ahead.”

  A few seconds later the radio crackled again. This time it was another familiar voice on the line. I heard Wilson saying in a calm voice.

  “Incoming. They’ve seen you and you’re going to have a couple mortars hitting you in a few seconds. Incoming. Incoming. Incoming.”

  I wasn’t real sure what to do. I couldn’t drive off the road. I couldn’t swerve around a bunch. I remembered a book I’d read about knights charging on horseback. The trick to a large cavalry charge against massed archers was to get through the field of fire that the archers could hit as quickly as possible. With that in mind I took us from idiotic speed on that small road to suicidal speed. The Hummer was driving itself as I was being bounced all over the cab of the thing. A second later the ditch to the left of us blew up and we were covered in dirt on that side of the car.

  We drove through it and kept on moving. There were explosions all around us but I didn’t have time to look and see how everyone else was doing. I couldn’t even tell how we were doing. When the passenger side got stitched with what looked like automatic weapons fire I assumed we must have closed to the point where they were now trying to shoot us the regular way. I turned hard on the wheel and slammed on the brakes to send us off the road and over a dirt mound into a parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence. The gas station was on the other side of the parking lot and through another fence.

  “How are you doing up there?” I yelled out the window.

  I didn’t hear anything back. Bullets were hitting the Hummer steadily now. It was the hail storm from hell. I put my foot to the floor on the pedal and aimed for the gas station. The Hummer busted through the fence and it was like I was trying to paddle my board out through the whitewash. Bullets were dinging off everything. I saw the group in the parking lot who were blasting away at us and aimed straight for them. I had to assume my gunner was dead so I was using the other weapon I had. I ducked my head low and drove right through the bullets and the ones shooting the bullets.

  Then I drove through my enemy and into the side of the gas station at around fifty miles per hour.

  Entry 12: No Rest for the Wicked

  I came to with blood all over my face. Ginny was banging on my window. I slowly unrolled the window. I was trying to remember where we were. I was in a car but why was I parked inside a convenience store? I ran a hand across my face and tried smearing off the blood that was pooling up. I sat up and a wave of di
zziness washed over me. I tried opening the door but it was jammed against something. Ginny was still banging on the door. It was starting to give me a headache. I started looking around on the floor for something to eat.

  More banging from the other side of the car. I looked up and saw a red-eyed evil looking bastard trying to break in through the window. I reached for my pistol but couldn’t remember where it was. While I was fumbling around the Zombie slumped forward then slid down the side of the car. A big hole in his forehead leaving a trail of brains and blood. I went back to trying to find a snack. A water bottle would be great. More banging on the door and shots from outside. I looked up and saw Ann was yelling at me and banging away on the window. She turned around and started shooting like one of the marines in that predator movie when the alien keeps going invisible in the jungle and pissing off all the steroid freaks with the big guns.

  I found some water and was chugging it down and watching her shoot when she stopped and gave me a look that brought me right out of the fog. I remembered where I was and why we were here. I hurt all over but I pushed that to the side and started working on getting out the door. The driver side door was embedded in the wall I’d crashed into. The front window was one big crack from the bullets and ramming it into a brick wall at high speed. I looked over at the passenger side door and it looked like it may be doable.