I looked at the sad, scared looking naked soldier strapped to the cheap metal folding chair.
“You speak English? If you speak English this will go a lot faster. If you tell us what we want to know we’ll tie you up and leave you here. You should be able to get out of here within a day or two. Any English at all?”
We all stared at him. No recognition flickered in his eyes when I said any of the words. I moved out of the way so Davis could squat down in front of him.
“Anata wa nihongo o hanasemasu ka?”
This time the Korean looked up. His eyes locked on Davis. He shook his head no.
“He doesn’t speak Japanese either. Which sucks, I’m fluent in Japanese. I’m going to sound like a bad Bruce Lee movie in Korean. What’s the main things we want to know? Because this is going to take some work and I want to focus on the main things first. This guy seems scared shitless so I think he will help if I can understand him. “
Wilson and I conferred. What we really wanted to know was where the leadership hung out at in San Diego so we could blow them up. We also wanted to know where the checkpoints were on the way to San Diego and how we could avoid them. Those were the two biggies. This guy seemed like a low-level douche so we weren’t holding our breaths. Any info would be better than what we had now. The Seals had sent people to see what was up previously but had lost contact with them and presumed they were KIA.
In very halting Korean, Davis started asking the guy questions. He mostly shook his head to say he didn’t know. I nodded at Reeves. Reeves walked over with a pair of clippers he’d found inside the garage and cut one of the guys toes off. He didn’t screw around, didn’t offer to not cut the guys toe off, he just did it. Davis looked at the toe lying on the floor then over at me.
“Ask him to tell us what he does know. Tell him to make it good or I’ll have Reeves cut off some other body parts. Let him guess which ones. Being naked should give him some ideas on things that could be chopped.”
Davis started talking again. He really did sound like some kind of reverse Bruce Lee. It was surreal. The Korean started talking super-fast. Davis yelled something in Korean and made hand motions to the guy to talk slower. Reeves leaned forward and cut off another toe.
“Why’d you do that?” Davis asked. “He’s talking. All he really knows is when they docked and came ashore the officers were all by the water in the big hotels. One of them had green writing on it in English.”
“Anything about checkpoints or how they search or what the hell him and the other guy were doing driving around in the Hummer by themselves and coming to check on us?” I asked. Wilson and everyone else in the garage was leaning in and listening intently. Except for Walker. He was cleaning his gun with a kit he had found in the garage.
“He said they were just patrolling. His job was to drive around and help out stuck Koreans. I guess they get lost a lot since they can’t read English to look at the street signs. They’re also supposed to collect survivors and bring them back to base. He was based out of that air base we drove through. I think that’s about all he knows. I can’t really understand half the shit he is saying but I think that’s the high level.”
That was some decent intel. We needed to hit by the harbor and this guy had been one of the scumbags sent out to collect women survivors and be some sort of Apocalyptic road ranger. I was getting a headache from trying to listen to the guy. I did feel like he had been pretty forthcoming and honest. He’d also been the kind of guy who drives around and collects women to take back to rape central.
Davis looked up at me, the Korean had just started sobbing these giant heart rending sobs. “He wanted to know where you were going to leave him here tied up. I told him we’re going to let him slowly bleed out overnight and then leave his dead body to be eaten by Zombies.”
“Sounds about right. Wilson, you got any more questions for this guy?”
Wilson did not have any more questions. He did look a little white in the face as Reeves took a hammer from the corner and used it to break both of the guys knees then bashed in the guys face before slamming the hammer down claw point first into the guys crotch. That seemed a little excessive to me. Whatever. I had no problem letting Reeves work out his anger and frustration on this guy. I just wished he’d hurry up. I wanted to go inside and down some Nyquil, followed by a shot of whiskey and some muscle relaxers and taking a long nap.
Wilson looked white because he’d never beaten an unarmed, naked man, who was tied to a chair to death before. He’d killed a lot in his life time but never like this. Welcome to the new normal.
“I remember my first torture session.” I said to him as I walked by with Ann’s hand in mine in search of a bedroom where we could collapse and get a few hours of blissful, drug and alcohol fueled slumber. I trusted Reeves to do a thorough job of killing the prisoner. I had a laundry list of things to do when we woke up.
Entry 19: House of the Rising Sun
I was worried about being able to fall asleep. I should have been worried about being able to wake up. Ann outdid herself in the napping narcotics department. Of course, we’d also been up the night before and had a serious Zombie encounter first thing this morning before torturing a man to death for little to no information. All in all, a pretty long day. A lot of us hadn’t made it. More had died than lived.
Walker shook me awake. I looked at my watch. It was six in the afternoon. They’d let us sleep for almost nine hours. I felt woozy with sleep. It was a great feeling. My mouth tasted like ass. Ann had been slacking on making me brush my teeth lately. I’d need to remind her that just because we were on a suicide mission that we had barely any chance of surviving there was no reason to neglect proper oral hygiene.
I got up. Ann told me she wanted breakfast in bed so I tossed her an MRE. She sat up and moodily opened it. Her hair looked like a giant bird’s nest but in her current mood I decided to refrain from telling her that. Instead, I opened up my MRE and after we traded each other based on what she wanted to eat we ate in silence. I knew she was trying not to focus on all the people we’d lost yesterday. It was just going to remind her of everyone else who had fallen along the way.
We finished up the food and got all of our gear strapped on and walked out the door and down the hall. Everyone was up and sitting around in the living room / kitchen area of the home. The random conversation died down as we walked in. I looked around for the Captain and saw that he was not there yet. I looked towards the room we had put him in and then over at Reeves. He shook his head sadly. Abraham was another victim of the attack earlier today. That left even fewer of us.
There was Ann, Reeves and me then there was Wilson, Walker and Davis. Out of the crew who had left the bunker, we were the only ones left. That was enough to only need to take one Hummer and the transport. At least I knew we had enough food and water to make it a lot further now. I was going to miss Abraham. He’d been one of those rare people who rise to the top but still listen to those around them.
“And then there were six.” Leave it to Reeves to say something wholly inappropriate. He looked like he might be drunk. He was wobbling a little bit. I guess I’d want a drink after beating a man to death with a hammer too.
“Before we go any further do all Seals know how to set off nuclear weapons that according to our governments official policy do not exist?” I asked.
“Luckily enough we were all trained on the devices that don’t exist. We were trained mostly to defuse them but it works both ways so we should be good. Worse case, you guys could just read the directions.” I looked up sharply at that.
‘Don’t press the big red button.” Davis said in a sing song voice. The others all laughed at my expense. It was a light laughter but it was better than the moping around we’d all been doing up until then.
“Everyone is good with carrying on then?” I asked. Everyone nodded in the affirmative. I hadn’t expected any less.
“We’re good.” Wilson said. “As a matter of procedure when i
t comes to military operations I want to make sure you are all good with me taking command now that the captain has fallen.”
No one had a problem with that. I especially did not have a problem with him being in charge. I hated being in charge. Then again, this mission was not everything to me like it was to the Seals. I wanted to hit the Koreans hard but I also wanted to get Reeves and Ann out safe. I was worried the current course we were on would end with all of us dead sooner rather than later.
“I’m good with you in command. I think we’ve known you long enough to trust you. If you piss us off I’ll just have Reeves shoot you in the foot again.”
Davis and Walker looked at Wilson with curiosity. He had evidently not mentioned that little tidbit to them. Then they looked at Reeves.
“He ate all the Cheetos.” Reeves said, looking directly at Walker.
We were all giddy from sleep and the realization that we had somehow ducked under another tidal wave of death. We did a quick inventory of ammo. The ammo inventory was not good. The new Hummer we had acquired was pristine compared to our old one. Half the windshield had actually crumbled through on the old one. It was a no brainer we were going to transfer all our stuff to the new one to drive. The new one had some extra ammo and diesel in it that would come in extremely useful as well. We’d gone through a lot of rounds when all those Zombies had come racing out of that garage.
We’d eaten through a lot of our small arm ammo as well. We decided it didn’t really matter as we had no hope of fighting our way to San Diego anyway. There were just way too many Koreans between here and the waterfront we were currently targeting to set the bomb off at. We’d be taking the transport and the new Hummer with us. The transport would be driven by Davis since he looked more like the Koreans than anyone else. Wilson would ride up front with him, keeping his head down and trying to look asleep the whole time.
The rest of us would be in the Hummer. No one wanted to ride in the back of the transport as it was pretty well coated in the remains of Zombies and the gruesome remains of the Seals the Zombies had latched onto in the back. The smell back there was horrific. We didn’t have any way to really clean it out without wasting a lot of time and energy so for now we were just going to leave it to air out. Hopefully driving with the canvass rolled up one side would allow enough air flow to make it habitable back there. At some point, we were going to have to all be in the back of the transport as the closer we got the more we would stand out.
Driving order and who was sitting where decided we waited for it to get dark. The order of tonight was to drive until we started getting close to San Diego. We really hadn’t gotten very far in the last couple of days. We were driving slow since we were driving at night. Looking at the maps we figured we could make Ridgecrest tonight without killing ourselves. Once we got past Ridgecrest we figured we were going to start seeing a lot more of the enemy. We’d worry about that during our planning session tomorrow night. We were all set for tonight’s drive so we spent about ten more minutes gathering our stuff before walking out to the waiting vehicles.
Walking through the garage, I could see where Reeves had tossed the Korean into the corner after beating him to a pulp. I hope he’d worked out some of his issues because we needed Reeves operating on all cylinders if we were going to pull off this attack and get out alive. I started to shut the garage door and Reeves stopped me.
“I want to leave it open so the Zombies can wander in and grab a snack.”
So, he was still working through his issues. Who wasn’t? The Zombie Apocalypse was a messed-up place to be alive. We should be thankful that at least that we were still alive and a healthy shade of pink. The idea that we may not survive the next few days didn’t really phase me anymore. We’d had so many days when death seemed imminent but we were still standing. We had never tried to kill tens of thousands of people with a nuclear bomb before though so this was a whole new scale of trying to get ourselves killed. I just hoped we could do it and figure out a way to get out. I may be cavalier with my own life but I wasn’t trying to be that way with anyone else’s. Especially not Ann.
I knew Ann was here for Thomas. She’d sworn she’d avenge him and her sister. This would pay off that vendetta for sure if we could pull it off. My dream was for us to pull this off then go grab Ginny and live happily ever after in some deserted town up north. I was trying to visualize what that would look like as we started driving. Maybe we could stop at a Barnes and Nobles and I could pick up that ‘Secret’ book by Oprah and enhance my visualization. Not that many bookstores were left anyway. The advent of E-Books had killed the corner bookstore and put a serious hurting on the large chain book stores as well. It figures that would happen right before the world really started to need regular books again. It wasn’t like I could download crap right now.
Entry 20: Ridgecrest
We rolled into Ridgecrest around four in the morning. This was pretty much the last stop we thought we were going to have where it was going to be safe to pull off and get some sleep. The plan after this was to get to San Diego and blow shit up. How we were going to pull that off was what we needed to figure out. Everyone assumed Abraham had a plan but if he had he hadn’t shared it with Wilson or anyone else who was still standing. Kind of like the rich uncle who forgets to leave a will and screws over all his nieces and nephews.
We passed by signs for Inyokern Airport and turned off on the main strip through the town of Ridgecrest. Driving down the strip it looked like we were in the standard desert suburbs we’d grown used to. A lot more houses out here than in the middle of nowhere we had been driving through recently. At the end of the strip there was even a strip mall with some decent sized stores. It looked like they’d been looted and a few had caught on fire but at least it brought back some feeling of being in civilization.
We found a grocery store with a partially covered loading dock area and decided that would be good enough for us. We pulled in and sat still for ten minutes waiting to see if any Zombies showed up. An old man wearing cowboy boots and orange shorts with the red eyes and blue skin of a Zombie came slowly around the corner. He spotted our Hummer and us sitting in it and his red eyes lit up as he let out a scream and started limping towards us.
Walker got out and motioned for Reeves not to shoot him with the fifty. We were in silent mode so as to not attract even more Zombies. Walker reached in the back seat and pulled out the fire ax he had been carrying around. He was tall enough where it made a useful weapon for him. He put the ax on his shoulder and waited for the old man to get close. He stepped forward and swung the ax overhand into the guys skull. The large ax, driven by the arms of a guy who always did his hundred morning push-ups, ended up shattering the skull and finally stopping somewhere in the corpses rib cage. Walker started trying to pull the ax out of the guy.
One of the reasons we’d developed our knock them on the ground and have a third person finish them off approach to Zombie fighting is we had figured out early on it sucks to get your weapons stuck inside Zombies while more Zombies are coming. Walker had his ax stuck in the old man’s rib cage. More Zombies came around the corner. There were only three more but it only takes one. Three meant we all needed to hop out and help out. This would be so much easier if we could just use guns.
Ann handed me the fire poker. With my neck and arms and basically my entire body still messed up I shouldn’t be swinging heavy stuff around. Which made it really difficult for me to take a leak! She was telling me to stand in the background and kill the Zombies as everyone else put them on the ground. The fire poker was pretty effective at killing someone who was already laying the ground. Super gross but effective.
Wilson walked over with Davis in tow. Walker finally got his ax out and put it back on his shoulder where the blood and gore dripped onto his uniform blouse. Davis had a samurai sword. Made me wish I had mine again as I stood there like an asshole holding a fire poker. Ann and Reeves moved forward with machetes and a baseball bat respectively. They engaged, I
moved forward and started bashing. We finished them off and looked up as five more Zombies came around the corner and one wandered around from the other side of the store as well.
We were being as quiet as we could but the Zombies themselves liked to scream when they saw us. It was as predictable that they would make noise as it was that hormonal teenage girls in the front row of a Justin Bieber concert were going to make idiots out of themselves. The screaming was starting to pull in more Zombies than we normally got in our Zombie Wake. Of course, we hadn’t been in a suburban setting in a while so this may require us to come up with some new procedures. Typically, coming in at night and being quiet took care of missing most of the Zombies. This town must have a bunch of light sleepers.
They kept coming. To the point where Wilson yelled out for us to disengage and fall back. Easier said than done. We were all fully engaged with the steady stream of Zombies now coming around the corners of the stores. They’d come around to see what all the yelling was about then see us and scream and run towards us to attack. We were holding our own but that wasn’t going to last much longer. Swinging big ass axes and even the wimpy looking fire poker gets old pretty quick. My arms already felt like they were on fire. I had been eating muscle relaxers pretty steadily for the last few days. Ann having relaxed her fear of us all becoming addicts. What with the suicide mission we were on and all.
Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown Page 10
