Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown

by R. S. Merritt

  Another spotlight caught us within five minutes of the last firefight. A loud horn sounded that probably was intended for us to stop and be boarded. Instead, Walker pushed the throttle all the way forward and we started making some serious wake. I vaguely could see the carriers outline retreating behind us as we pounded through the large swells heading around the bend in the bay. Bullets started flying by us, with a few punching holes into our boat. Wilson returned fire with the machine gun we’d just procured. It was pretty wild return fire since he did not have the gun mounted. It was accurate enough to discourage the guy driving the patrol craft from coming at us full speed.

  Up ahead in the mist we heard other claxons sounding. We didn’t have time to stop and be boarded. Wilson kept watch on the stern and kept sending lead towards any lights he saw behind us. Reeves, Davis and I each got ready to shoot some rockets. Ann had her heavy barreled AR-15 with the fancy night scope on it and was getting herself setup in the bridge. She’d opened up one of the windows to brace the heavy barrel on. She could see better than we could and opened fire on something I saw as a blob off to the starboard side.

  I went ahead and launched a rocket that way based on the fact that I wanted to launch a rocket. If Ann thought the blob was some sort of threat I was more than willing to trust her gut. My rocket disappeared into the mist and I think I heard an explosion but I didn’t actually see anything happen. Pretty disappointing for a first launch of a rocket. Behind me I heard another rocket take off and turned to look forward as the rocket Davis had launched arced out into the night and hit something. It made a muffled ‘whoomp’ noise and a big flash of light. Reeves sent one in that general direction that did the same thing to a lesser extent. We all got busy reloading.

  Davis disappeared into the hold and came back with a crate of mortars and a couple of the launchers. He had me hold the tube while he dropped the mortars down into it and sent them out into the night. We were basically just peppering the side of the bay we knew had people stationed on it. The more confusion we could lay down the more likely we were going to make it out of here alive. The more noise we made on the mainland the more Zombies would head that way and help us out with the assault as well.

  We were full speed ahead on the fancy sports boat we were on. Shooting at anything we saw pop up in the mist with a machine gun, mortars, rockets and Ann pumping rounds into it from her sniper rifle. When we couldn’t see anything, Davis was still sending mortars into the air in random directions. Some bullets dinged off our hull and splashes around us showed where the enemy was trying to fight back but first they had to figure out where we were. I was starting to feel pretty good about us escaping.

  Then we heard the beat of helicopter rotors bearing down on us. We had the advantage in that they had no way of knowing if we were hostile or not while we could shoot at anything that wasn’t actually on our boat and be good. Davis grabbed the big fancy rocket launcher that was built to knock helicopters out of the sky and got himself set up. We only had a single crate of the surface to air missiles so hopefully they weren’t throwing a fleet of helicopters at us. The helicopter sounded like it was circling all around us then it suddenly just appeared out of the mist. Davis stood and aimed as the water around us churned up and bullets thumped into the deck around us. Davis calmly sent a rocket at the helicopter which attempted to duck out of the way and lost control and went into the sea.

  “You missed.” Reeves noted. Picking himself up from the deck and looking at Davis. Davis just shrugged and got another rocket loaded in preparation for the next helicopter that may come our way.

  We all picked ourselves and up and checked on the damage to the boat. We were absolutely going to have to file an insurance claim but we were still seaworthy and the engine was good. We just had a few large holes blown in the deck and one big crack in the hull above the water line. Then we slowed to a stop and the engine whined real loud before Walker went ahead and shut it down. Wilson looked up towards us.

  “Did they hit the engine?” He asked.

  “Hope not. Bombs going off in like thirty minutes and I don’t think we’re swimming out of here fast enough to survive. I’m hoping kelp. You want to take a dip and see what you can see there LT?” Davis sounded off. A few seconds later we heard the splash as Wilson dove in to check it out.

  We all waited. I think there was an almost audible exhale as Wilsons voice drifted back towards us saying he’d found the kelp and was cutting it loose. Everyone went back to their posts and made sure weapons were ready. Davis laid down the surface to air weapon and started launching mortars in random directions again. We really needed to be leaving soon. We heard Wilson yelling to start the engines as he climbed back on board. At the same time, we heard the rotors of another helicopter and heard the whine of some kind of speed boat coming in our general direction.

  Our boat engines started back up and we were once again underway. We shot at the speedboat when it appeared and it banked off to go back where it had come from. Davis once again calmly waited for his shot and launched a missile at the helicopter when it appeared and started raking us with small arms fire. This time, his perseverance cost him a bullet wound to the upper thigh. We drug him into the cabin below decks and I left Ann to patch him up while I went back on deck to keep up the defense of our boat as we rocketed out of the bay and into open ocean. I asked Walker how far we needed to be before the bomb exploded to be safe.

  “This is a question you’re just thinking of now?” He asked with a big shit eating grin. “We’re probably already good. The blast zone from the nuke is probably going to be less than a half mile diameter. Probably break the carrier and send it to the bottom and maybe knock out a few buildings. It’ll also make the whole area unhealthy to hang out in for a few months because of the radiation. We’re hauling ass now because we don’t want to have to fight any more helicopters. They’ll eventually win if they don’t run out of helicopters first.”

  We continued slicing though the large swell out in the ocean as Wilson came and took control of the wheel and Walker took up watch on the stern. I stayed on the deck near the rocket launchers and other weapons we had strewn all over the place. Ann popped out and said Davis was sleeping. She’d stopped the bleeding with a simple bandage and it didn’t look like he was going to bleed out anytime soon but she wasn’t positive. The bullet must not have clipped any major arteries or he’d already be dead.

  While Ann was talking a huge explosion ripped through the mist and a blinding flash of light appeared behind us. For a second, we could all make out the shore line as if it were daylight and there was no rain. Then it was gone and the darkness swallowed everything back up. We all stood still. Reveling in the gravity of the moment.

  Ann stood up and in a clear voice she let her vengeance be done.

  “That was for you, Thomas. Rest in peace my brave little man.”

  Entry 31: Journey up the Coast

  Davis died in the early morning. Ann went to check on him and he was dead. The bullet must have nicked an artery after all and we just didn’t know it. Everything had seemed fine with him and Ann had been checking on him every hour to make sure he was good. We buried him at sea in the early morning. We put him in a blanket and filled the bottom of the blanket with empty shell casings. Then we taped him into the blanket with all that spent brass. We sent him off like the badass he was.

  Trying to come up with something to say before we sent him into the ocean Wilson had lead us all in the lord’s prayer. He’d followed that with some stories about Davis from before the Zombies and the Koreans. Stories about villages in the middle of Africa and up in the middle east where children and women were treated like possessions by the men. Davis had not taken well to that treatment of the people and word had quickly gotten around that when Davis walked down the street you shouldn’t beat your wife or kids. Wilson remembered asking Davis if he felt good about that and Davis had told him no.

  “Davis wanted to see the evil so he could root it out. He
hated that because he’d put some men in their place for picking on women and kids in front of him that they stopped doing it when he was around. If he couldn’t see it he couldn’t fight it. He’s always been that way. I think everyone saw that in the battle yesterday when he took out two helicopters with his own hands. He saw evil coming for his friends and he stood unflinching as bullets pounded the ground around him and he did what needed to be done. I’ve known him for years and that’s always how he has been. A man’s man and a warrior’s warrior. No truer friend, no greater enemy. Go in peace to your reward. You’ve earned it.”

  We had sent him to his rest. I sat there afterwards with Ann on the deck and we held each other while the wind whipped Ann’s hair into my face. Reeves had disappeared into the cabin with Walker. We all assumed they were going to get shitfaced in honor of Davis and pass out. We were all good with that. Wilson was keeping us headed north. The swells were giving us a constant up and down and rocking motion which I hoped did not lead to Reeves getting sick in the cabin again. That smell still lingered in my nostrils.

  We had started this mission with multiple vehicles full of Seals. We’d ended with just the two Seals left. Somehow, Reeves, Ann and I were still standing. We were battered and bloody but we were standing. Ann blamed herself for Davis dying. I tried to talk her out of her funk.

  “You had some EMT training when you were a cop and then you read the hell out of the first aid manual in that Walgreens we go stuck in. None of that gets you to the level where you’d be able to treat a tiny nick in an artery that you couldn’t have even known about without equipment and tests that we don’t have. We don’t even know if that is what actually killed him. I do know he wouldn’t blame you. I know no one else blames you. You do the best you can, with what you’ve got, where you’re at. You can’t do anything more than that baby doll.”

  She smiled and kissed me and told me thanks for trying but she was still going to move forward with feeling like crap about it for a few more days at least. I stopped trying to talk her out of it. She was a big girl and it’s not like this was the first of our companions to fall on our journey. Each one hurt though. I didn’t want to say anything but I was anxious to get back and make sure Ginny was ok. I felt like we’d done the right thing in sending her off to keep her safe and to protect all those girls we’d rescued.

  “Do you think Ginny is ok?” Ann asked me.

  So much for not talking about those particular fears right now.

  “It’s Ginny. I’m surprised we survived without her. I have no doubt she’s been able to survive without us. I’m more worried about the Koreans and Zombies in Spokane. Poor guys didn’t have a chance. What with her going there with a couple busloads of traumatized women and a crippled Seal.”

  We had not been given the exact address of the location in Washington that Ginny had been headed to but since one of the rendezvous that we were supposed to try first was a drug store in Spokane we were reasonably sure it would be close to that area. Talking to Wilson it looked like if we had no problem getting diesel and the weather didn’t screw us over we’d be up in the Seattle area in about two weeks if we stuck with the boat. If we didn’t stick with the boat we may be able to get there faster but it was riskier going overland. We had talked about it and agreed we should try and at least get north of San Francisco before switching to land transport.

  We were currently headed for Dana Point to fuel up. Wilson had noted before we left that the place was still stocked up on fuel and it was pretty easy to get to so that was the first stop. We should be there sometime in the middle of the night. We’d anchor and wait for morning to try and navigate in. It was too risky at night. The risk of going in during the day being that we may attract a ton of Zombies but if so we’d just anchor after we’d checked out the harbor and wait for the sun to set before making our move. We could always dance around on the deck and try to get most of the Zombies to jump in the harbor and drown.

  Once we were fueled up and had stockpiled as much as possible we’d go ahead and try to get north of San Francisco. From there we could make the call to stay on the boat or try and find a vehicle to get up to Washington in. I had been assuming that Wilson and Walker would stick with us. I asked Wilson if that was what his plan was.

  “You guys are the only family Walker and I have left. I’d love to keep hanging out with you. You seem to be lucky if nothing else. I doubt there’s much command structure left as far as the US military goes so I’m going to consider myself retired after pulling off that last mission. I also feel responsible for the group Ginny took up to that base so I at least need to drop in. Walkers a big boy and I think he’s going to feel the same way. If him and Reeves make it out of the cabin without dying from alcohol poisoning we can confirm that with him. I guess if I’m retiring I no longer speak for him.”

  That sounded about right. When Walker did finally emerge, he agreed with it all and stated for the record that he was still good to go with the current command structure. Also, he wanted to know if we had Tylenol and water bottles. He was in need of both. Besides, why wouldn’t he want to go where the busloads of women had been taken?

  Entry 32: Getting there is Half the Battle

  We fueled up with minimal issues at Dana Point. We did end up dancing around some in the daylight to get a group of Zombies to jump into the water and drown. These Zombies seemed to think about it before they jumped in versus the ones we’d seen in the beginning who hadn’t given their own survival a second thought. It made sense that this far into it the Zombies who were left were the ones who were slightly less suicidal.

  We had to manually prime the tank to get the fuel flowing and once topped off we headed out of Dana Point and up the coast past San Francisco. We were getting low on fuel again and would need to decide if we wanted to ditch the boat around Bodega Bay or keep heading north up the coast after we got fueled back up. Wilson and Walker talked it over loudly so the rest of us could pretend to know what they were talking about. There were shoals and banks and all kinds of stuff if we stayed in the ocean moving forward now. Without all that being documented on current charts it would be pretty stupid to try and make it much further on the boat. It would also take a lot longer.

  I think we all were worried about Ginny and the rest of them and wanted to catch up to them soon and see what was going on. As to what we would do after we found them I didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about that right now. One step at a time. First, we needed to find her. We set a course for Bodega Bay and hoped we had enough gas in the tank to get there. We wound up running out of fuel within site of the Bay. We had spare fuel in jugs we were able to dump in and get moving again but if we’d had to go much further we’d have been screwed.

  The coastline of California was a lot different than the coastlines I was used to being from the east coast. California coastlines were narrow beaches with a backdrop of soaring angry looking cliffs. It made you feel like a Viking out to do some pillaging when you started rolling versus the east coast where you mostly felt like an overweight tourist with a sunburn. We sailed into Bodega Bay early in the morning. It was a desolate looking area. Woods and mountains and cliffs everywhere. It was the perfect spot to pull up an RV full of surfboards and fishing poles and chill for a few weeks by the beach.

  There was a harbor that in normal times had been dredged out regularly. Looking at it now we decided to just ditch on the beach instead of risk getting stuck in the sand trying to get in the channel. We headed in towards the beach and once close enough we dropped anchor and took turns bailing over the side with our gear and walking it through the freezing water to the beach and coming back to get more stuff. Another difference between the east coast and west coast is on the east coast the currents push warm water up from the Caribbean. On the west coast the currents are pushing cold water down from the arctic. That means the water is pretty much always cold.

  We were all freezing as we walked weapons and supplies from the boat to the shore through the sur
f. Soaked head to foot I drug myself up on the beach carrying an RPG with a bag of canned food over my other shoulder. I dropped the bag of canned food into the pile of junk we were putting together on the beach and looked up as I heard screams from out of the woods. Looking up I saw a group of around ten Zombies break out of the wood line and charge towards me. They were grouped real close together and since I was holding an RPG in my hand I went ahead and took aim and let it fly.

  Beginners luck or whatever but I bowled a strike with that rocket. All ten of the Zombie pins on the ground with different degrees of missing body parts. It had been pretty loud though. It being a rocket and all. Other screams started sounding from the woods and everywhere else around us. Ann, looking cold and miserable, came sloshing out of the surf and lay down in the sand with her AR-15 at the ready.

  “You couldn’t have tried finding a slightly louder way? Maybe yelled at them with a bullhorn first or something?” She called me some other words I won’t bother documenting here because I’m sure she didn’t mean them. Then she set about sniping the Zombies as they emerged from the wood line. This positon was not tenable. We didn’t have unlimited ammo and it was unlikely the Zombies were going to stop coming as long as we kept making noise. The catch 22 being as long as the Zombies kept coming we had to keep making noise. We totally should have figured out the whole crossbow thing. That would have eliminated a lot of these issues we kept running into.