Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown

by R. S. Merritt

  “Don’t fire unless they shoot first. Try to look Korean.” Walker seemed to think his advice was sound and when it came to dealing with non-blue enemies I did tend to defer to the Seals. They had all been there and done that with enemies like this in the past. Walker did not even seem nervous. He just checked his pistol and went back to casually watching the approaching vehicle.

  Reeves had on a Korean uniform we’d ripped off a soldier we had killed. We’d washed off most of the blood on the big trench coat piece of it and the big furry hat covered most of Reeves head. If he kept his back to the approaching Hummer and squatted down a little bit to look slightly shorter then this may still work. We had no idea why the Hummer was coming back for us. We had no idea if we were the reason it was coming back. The Hummer got right behind us and drove there for a few minutes then flashed its lights.

  Ann started slowing us down and getting ready to pull over. Walker spoke up from the back seat.

  “Just keep driving. Hopefully they’re just trying to pass us.”

  Walker was right. The Hummer pulled into the other lane and quickly went around us. We all slumped in our seats a little as some of the tension drained away. As long as they had been directly behind us we had all been waiting for the fifty caliber bullets to start flying through the back window. Not being shot was a great feeling.

  The Hummer drove across the road and we saw the taillights disappear down a side street into the town of Coleville proper. We had no idea why they had disappeared into the town. Maybe it was to report back that they had come and had a look at us and our Hummer was shot to shit. Maybe they were on the lookout for people coming at them. Maybe our plan of driving down the biggest road straight for them in the middle of the night being led by a Monster Truck was not the smartest military operation in history. Maybe the guy driving the Hummer had diarrhea and Coleville was the closest place he thought may have a nice toilet.

  Whatever the reason. Our convoy was starting to have to slow down to avoid the ‘Zombie Wake’ left by the enemy convoy that had just passed us. Captain Abraham had been listening and decided not to risk a Zombie through any of our windshields if he could help it. I’d told him our basic Zombie avoidance technique on the open road was to slow down so that the Zombie would come at us from the side of the car instead of jumping on the hood then speeding right past them. I shared with Walker that I thought it was pretty awesome how the Captain actually listened.

  Walker was silent for a few minutes then started talking in a serious voice. We’d typically only gotten one line zingers from him in the past so when he started talking serious Ann and I paid attention.

  “Yeah. The Captain and the rest of us have learned the hard way that it’s best to listen to the people who actually know what is going on. We’ve been the victims of intelligence officers and such too many times to count. Our motto should be ‘question everything’ because that is how we stay alive. Questioning everything and everyone and trusting no one except the ones we have to or who have earned it. Do you know why we trust you?”

  I honestly had no idea why they trusted me. I was a college dropout who had fumbled my way through the apocalypse. Most of my decisions had been the result of someone else telling me what to do. I had gotten the command job for our group because no one else wanted it and I had been too slow to say, “Not It” basically. Why a bunch of special force operators would ever listen to me or want to have us tag along on one of the last major missions of the US military was beyond me. I didn’t bother saying any of this out loud. I would have just given him a confused look but I couldn’t turn my head so I didn’t bother. I shrugged instead. Shrugging even hurt. Man, the apocalypse sucks.

  “We trust you because Ann and Reeves and Ginny do. We trust you because you’re covered in scars from doing your best to keep your people alive. We trust you because you don’t think of yourself as a big deal but you do think you can do what you set out to do. I’ve heard you describe yourself as a college dropout. At some point along the way, you’ve grown. Whoever that dropout Steve was he is long gone. The man sitting up there now, not able to turn his head because he killed a bunch of enemy soldiers by running them over while they poured rounds into the windshield of his Hummer, is a new man. You are definitely born again and you are bad ass.”

  Then Walker just stopped talking. As far as motivational and insightful speeches went I considered it up there. I wished I’d had him wipe the Cheetos out of his beard so I could have taken him a little more seriously. I didn’t know what to say so I just sat there like an idiot. I’m pretty good at sitting still and keeping my mouth shut. Ann has been training me now for a while.

  We’d left the enemy Hummer that had turned around and came up behind us far behind. We did catch glimpses of the Zombie wake here and there but I think most of them were being knocked out of the way by the transport truck and the monster truck leading the way ahead of us. We were moving slow but steady and putting a decent number of miles behind us. We stopped to let Reeves and Walker switch places. Walker was way too tall so had to duck down pretty low to be mistaken for a Korean but he only had to worry about it when we were being watched. Reeves got in bitching about freezing and eating bugs for the last few hours. He immediately started rummaging around for the Cheetos. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Walker had eaten them all.

  Actually, I did have the heart to tell him that but I wanted to save it for a time when Walker could deny it with the evidence plain in his beard. Once that happened, I could pretty much die happy.

  We rolled through the town of Bridgeport around four in the morning. We drove right by a checkpoint where two Korean guys were sitting in a Hummer. We slowed down but they didn’t seem to care. They just sat there with the dome light on inside their jeep and looked bored. I assumed they must be looking for something else. There was an airport nearby but we did not pass it. I wondered if we would have been searched more thoroughly if we had headed for the airport.

  It was starting to get light outside when we pulled into Mono City. We were looking for a place to crash for the day where we wouldn’t be visible from the highway or a passing plane or helicopter. Mono City, what a dumb name, was more of a large neighborhood than a city. A bunch of houses off two main roads until the roads merged into a single road after a couple of miles and disappeared into the desert. A population sign when we had gotten off the highway had told us a whopping 172 people was the total population of Mono City.

  With dawn breaking we found a warehouse that looked like we could probably park the transport in it if we could get the big bay doors open. Having a bunch of Seals who were formally trained in B&E and totally equipped for it should make that a non-issue. We were in a hurry to get the transport out of sight so they jumped out and did something to the chain on the door then the big doors rolled right up.

  It looked like we had found most of those 172 people. They were blue now and had been standing behind the garage door for who knew how long until we rolled up and opened it for them. They had not been screaming or making any noise. The Seals had done the standard bang on the garage door and listen test we all used. For some unknown reason these Zombies chose to just stand there and wait instead of making a bunch of noise like good little Zombies.

  The doors had gone all the way up once released. Most of the Seals were in the back of the transport vehicle waiting for it to roll into the garage but a few had gotten out to secure the perimeter. Reeves was busy taking a leak somewhere in the alley behind us. Ann and I were sitting in the front of the Hummer looking around to see where to park. Walker was up in the turret. All this positional data scrolled through my subconscious as the wall of noise hit us.

  The Zombies had been quiet when we banged on the door. They had been quiet when the doors rolled up. They had one voice now and it screamed out for blood. The four Seals who’d been tasked with opening the doors were caught flat footed. Two of them had rifles out because you never know if a few Zombies are going to come running out when
you open up a large warehouse like this. Those two Seals managed to get off a burst before they disappeared under a wave of blue bodies. The ones who had opened the doors and stepped back disappeared under that wave as well.

  I pulled out my pistol and put it out the window and started blasting into the mob of blue skinned freaks charging us from the warehouse. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for Reeves. The fifty on the roof started talking as Walker lit up the Zombies he could shoot without risking hitting anyone on our side. Ann jammed the Hummer into reverse and we started moving backwards down the road we had driven in on. Hopefully, that would give the transport and monster truck room to back up as well.

  The transport started backing up as a few of the Seals jumped in the back of it. Zombies were climbing up the front of it and blocking the drivers view. I saw Zombies start pouring into the back of the transport. Gunfire escalated from the back. Reeves was sprinting down the road towards us. He had a huge wet stain on the front of his pants. He must not have finished pissing yet when he heard the Zombies sounding their charge.

  The monster truck started out moving backwards then it circled around the transport and ran over the Zombies trying to get in the open back door of the transport. Then the monster truck backed up again as the Captain tried to use it to shield the Seals inside from the assault. The transport lurched backward at the wrong time and hit the big diesel truck with the oversized tires hard enough to roll it over on its side. Ann reversed direction and started moving us slowly back towards the battle. Walker kept up a steady rhythm of single shots and short bursts.

  I saw Reeves had picked up a couple of followers. A little boy Zombie was sprinting after him as was an older woman. Both were fixated on Reeves as the ran with their mouths open. I heard a couple of shots and watched as Walker tore them apart with large caliber rounds before moving to other targets. Reeves caught up to us and pulled open the back-passenger door to pull out his M-16 and his bag of clips he had been loading as we drove. He put the M-16 up to his shoulder and started walking back towards the fray. He was shooting as he walked. Picking out targets and putting them down.

  Abraham had pulled himself out of the monster truck and was standing on the top of it shooting down into the massed Zombies surrounding him. The transport vehicle abruptly pulled forward and started going through the motions of a three-point turn. A three-point turn executed by a driver who couldn’t see shit and knew that if they didn’t get turned around within a few more seconds they were going to be Zombie food. The transport got turned around and pulled out of the parking lot down the road. It moved past us.

  Walker shot Zombies with the big gun as they chased the transport in single file. Taking a page from Reeves book Ann and I hopped out of the Hummer and pulled out our rifles. We started advancing on the remaining Zombies as well. Writhing, screaming, bleeding blue bodies were on the ground everywhere. We watched as Abraham stopped to reload and was pulled off the side of the truck by a large Zombie. The Zombie had grabbed him around his ankle from behind and yanked hard. Abraham hit the concrete parking lot head first and his body bounced off the ground with the impact.

  We started moving forward more urgently. We were shooting as fast as we cold without hitting him as he lay there. By the time we got there, he was unconscious and covered in shot up blue bodies. I covered while Reeves pulled him out from under the bodies. There had been a real danger of him drowning as he lay there with all the blood running down into the parking lot in that area. Especially for the dead bodies that had been piled on top of him.

  Several of the bodies were not dead yet and we had to police them with knives and axes. We had to walk around and smash open the heads of a lot of people who looked kind of normal laying on the ground. Again, it was the children that hurt me the most. The frail bodies lying on the ground. Us having to bash in their little heads. I wondered if we had any humanity left? What did it say about us that we could walk around and do this? It was almost commonplace at this point.

  I remember how I used to cry myself to sleep at night after doing something like this. Now I just took sleeping pills to cancel out dreaming and avoided even having to deal with nightmares. Or, at least I no longer remembered them when I woke up. Better living through pharmaceuticals!

  Everybody who had been in the back of the transport was dead. We killed the Zombies that were in the back of the transport feasting on their corpses. We pulled out the dead carcasses of the Zombies and our half-eaten friends. It’s not brains that Zombies seem to go for first. It’s ears and eyes. I guess because they’re easy to rip off or poke out and eat. We pulled out the bodies of the guys we’d been living with and joking around with for the past month. Now those people were just hunks of half eaten meat. Faces with no eyes and the ears ripped off of them.

  I puked. I couldn’t stop puking. It came up so fast I didn’t even have time to try and stop it if I had wanted to. I was crying. Puke and tears and snot covered my face. Blood covered my body from moving around all the corpses. I had bits of brain and blood and skull fragments on my boots and stuck to my pants from walking around bashing open skulls.

  We were alive because we had not been in the transport. It was that simple. So easy how life could end so fast. The only people left were the two guys who had been driving the transport, an unconscious Abraham, Walker and us. We were also down a vehicle. None of us wanted to hang out here any longer. We rolled up the remains of the Seals into tarps and loaded them in the back of the transport. We wanted to get somewhere safe and put them to rest respectfully. I know a huge, irrational fear of mine was that my body would be left to be eaten by Zombies when I died. We had all discussed that and vowed to do our best to give each other burials of some sort if the situation allowed for it.

  We got the bodies loaded up and drove slowly back to the main street. On the main street, a single Hummer was idling and a Korean soldier was standing outside of it waving to us. We were caught. As soon as we got closer he’d know we were not Korean soldiers and he’d radio it in. We were in front of the transport. When we started to get to the point where I thought the soldier might see us too clearly, I yelled for Ann to punch it. Walker and I were on the same wavelength because he opened up on full auto with the fifty.

  A round caught the waving Korean in the head as he was turning to make a run for it. His body was flung onto the top of the Hummer. Another man inside the Hummer tried climbing over the hump to get in the driver’s seat. He was thrown backwards as Ann rammed into the Hummer. The T-Bone maneuver completed we jumped out and I pulled the Korean out the passenger door and onto the ground. He was groggy but starting to come around.

  I put my boot on his neck and asked if he spoke English. Based on the stream of panicked Korean I got back I was guessing the answer was no. I was fixing to put a bullet through his brain and leave him in the dirt when Walker moved forward and wrapped the guy up with tape and zip ties. I looked at him with a what the hell kind of look.

  “Dude, we have some hooked on phonics Korean type shit with us. We may be able to translate this guy and get some intel out of him. If not, we can kill him later. Give us something to do anyway.”

  Made sense. I wasn’t too sure I liked the way he had just equated torturing a man for information to grabbing a Redbox for the night. I helped throw him in the back of the transport then we got back in the Hummer and drove around looking for a spot to spend the day, regroup and squeeze in some light torture if we could find the time. Reeves went and snagged the Hummer the Koreans had just been kind enough to drive right to us.

  Entry 18: Hooked on Korean Phonics

  We gathered in the living room of the home we had decided to spend the day in. We’d picked a house that had a large covered boat in the grass by the driveway. We’d pulled the tarp off the boat and used it to cover a large portion of the transport. We’d parked the Hummers in the garage after pushing out the cars already in there. We drug the terrified Korean into the garage, stripped him and tied him to a chair.
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  We had Abraham resting inside on a bed. He had not woken up yet. All of the Seals looked squeamish. Wilson, who had been driving the transport when the Zombies swarmed, started talking about getting some water to pour over the guy and making him stay awake all night. Reeves, Ann and I just stared at him.

  “You guys haven’t tortured anyone before?” Reeves asked.

  “Nope. It’s never really been an option we needed before. Or, we killed everyone before we could torture them for info. I suppose you guys have tortured some Koreans before for info?” Wilson gave us a wry smile that died on his lips when all of us just stared back at him. “Of course, you have. Remind me to never piss you guys off. How should we start?”

  “I’m thinking tying him naked to a chair and then us standing around talking about who has the most experience torturing people was a pretty good start. Now, who has done the most with the hooked-on phonics stuff?” I looked around the room.

  The other guy to survive in the cabin of the transport was a wiry little Asian guy named Davis. He’d been playing the Korean translation learning volumes into his ear phones every chance he got for the last three months. He’d figured it was probably going to be important at some time or other. He already spoke Japanese as well so that helped. Plus, like he said, if it looked like we were going to lose he wanted to know enough to be able to pass for Korean so he could switch sides.