Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  We got to the exit for SR 44, pretty much the first exit once you head from Daytona to Orlando, and we started our way up the off ramp. Reeves was moaning in quiet pain, everyone else had their heads back and were obviously trying to get some quick rest in before the next crisis hit. I pulled around a large firetruck that had stopped in the middle of the ramp and headed towards the solitary mini mart sitting off the exit. I drove through the parking lot slowly looking to see if anyone came out to try and attack us. It was starting to get dark so there was always a chance the Zombies were in there sleeping so I pulled right up to the window and honked the horn quickly.

  I figured honking the horn would wake up any Zombies inside and they’d rush towards us and then I would just drive away. About five seconds after I hit the horn I did hear a loud scream from up the street. I stomped on the accelerator to reverse away from the building and the car died. We had run out of gas. Everyone in the car had gone from being restful to staring, slack jawed, at the idiot who had decided to toot the horn to let the Zombies know were here and then trap us in a car with no gas. I kind of wished I was one of my passengers so I could yell at me too. Before they could offer me the crown to the kingdom of dumbass, I opened my door and motioned for everyone to get out

  Ann maneuvered out of the passenger seat, gently leaning Reeves against the seat, came over and asked me what the plan was.

  I looked back at her and as everyone else gathered around I started off, “The horn was stupid, we’re going to have some company here in a minute or two thanks to the horn. I own that mistake. Let’s kill whatever comes at us, as quietly as possible, and then we’ll work on getting transport out of here.”

  We all pulled out our hand weapons. I had the sword that had seen me through so many hard times at this point. Thomas had a metal stair railing that was super heavy and absolutely crushed skulls. Ann had a stained short wooden baseball bat and Ginny had a lacrosse stick. Chrissie had a knife in her hand but no one really expected her to join in on the combat coming up. It looked like about three Zombies had come to investigate my horn mishap.

  The Zombies came at us fast. Two looked middle-aged while one was a very old, large Chinese looking woman. The Zombies were dressed in regular street clothes, making me think these ones had been turned by Zombies biting them rather than just waking up with the virus at the beginning of it all. The street clothes were ratty and stained, the Zombie faces were purple and black and stained red around the mouths. It looked like the blue coloring that had been prevalent in the beginning had changed to more of a black vein look. Whatever color they were and whoever they had been before becoming infected now they were just obstacles to be beaten out of our path.

  We spread out to give each other room to move. We looked like a bunch of little leaguers getting ready to do some batting practice. All of us had a similar stance of one leg forward, weapon pulled back, just waiting to swing. A big difference between fighting Zombies and fighting a group of people would be that the Zombies weren’t going to try and dodge. They did not counter or do anything fancy. They all just came straight at you, they all required you to swing for the fences in order to keep them off of you and make sure they went down.

  Ann, Ginny and I led into the Zombies with Thomas and Chrissie sheltered behind us. Thomas had taken on the role of stepping in and finishing off the Zombies with a stab from his metal pole once we put them on the ground. It was a vital function as Zombies didn’t stop just because you put them on the ground with a severe headache. It was a task perfectly suited for him as well since with just the one good arm he had a difficult time swinging a bat hard enough to put a Zombie on the ground with the first swing.

  Reeves and I typically took the larger Zombies, leaving Ginny and Ann to deal with the smaller ones. With Reeves, out of commission, Ann stepped up to help with the larger Zombies. The problem with that being the Reeves and I both had more mass. When we hit a Zombie full on we had an extra 100 pounds of our bodies behind it. This kept us from getting bowled over most of the time and ensured the Zombie stayed down. Ann does not have a lot of extra flesh. She’s definitely got flesh, in all the right places, but not enough to provide the stopping power Reeves and I do. I feel politically correct saying that since a skinny man would have the same issues. The main difference being that Ann looks super-hot doing it. So much for the political correctness.

  The first two Zombies went down pretty normally. We all pretty much had the timing down now on whacking Zombies in the head efficiently. The fat Chinese bitch refused to die. After we had finished off the first two Ann had graciously pointed at the huge Chinese monster and nodded that she was all mine. I stepped forward and confidently swung my sword as hard as I could at her head as she was getting close enough to try and grab for me. I think the fat on her shoulder made my blade ricochet off her shoulder instead of crushing into her skull like it should have.

  The momentum of the swing knocked her off balance and she fell to the ground. She took me down with her. We landed like a “T” with her stomach and crotch pinning my face to the ground. I struggled to breathe around the folds of her distended belly and push her off me. It smelled like a kitty litter bin with chunky sour milk poured into it. I struggled my way out from under her with help from Ginny and Ann. Thomas had finished off the beast while I was still desperately thrashing around trying to escape suffocation. I gasped for air and made sure all my parts remained unbitten. My neck and shoulders were feeling pretty whip lashed but that was par for the course at this point.

  All the Zombies dealt with for the moment we all took a breath and looked around. There were some scattered cars but nothing that looked like it might still run. We dutifully tried opening doors and turning keys to see if any of them surprised us. None of them did. I looked in the Hyundai to see if we had anything shoved in there to siphon gas with. At one point, I had thrown a length of garden hose in the back seat. That had evidently been knocked out. I continued to look around. Not seeing anything pop out at me I headed over towards the mini mart. Everyone followed in line behind me, automatically taking up their normal patrol positions and trying to look every direction at once to make sure we didn’t get blindsided.

  Reeves was still laying in the car, asleep, or just keeping his eyes closed to avoid doing any work. I nodded at Ginny and pointed at Reeves so she broke off and went to stand guard. I wanted to get into the mini mart and take a look around but it looked like it was closed up pretty good. I didn’t want to make any more noise after the horn incident without first running it by everybody. I was concerned the girls were going to vote to break in and I wasn’t sure I was ready to risk my life for a box of wet wipes yet. We had some water and ammo left, what we really needed right now was transportation. We needed to stay as far ahead of the horde still coming up the road after us as possible.

  I went around the back of the mini mart after checking the front doors and seeing they were locked and chained on the inside. I was hoping maybe a back door was open. There was a back door and it was closed and locked. There was also a large baby blue Extended cab Ford F150 parked in the back. There was a bug covered, wrangler wearing lump of nasty gelatinous flesh covered in flies on the ground beside the truck. I walked over and poked the remainder of the corpse with my foot. A mess of flies flew off and I instantly regretted it as some landed on me.

  Swishing my hands around to try and keep them off me I tried the handle to the truck. It was locked of course. At least the alarm did not go off. I looked back down at the nastiness on the ground. There was a good chance that person was the owner of this truck. I had no desire to get any closer to that pungent pile of leftover humanity. I did it anyway. With flies on me and barely keeping my gag reflex in check I felt around blindly until I found a set of keys. When I pulled them out something popped and a bunch of fluid poured on the ground.

  I got up. Took three steps. Fell to the ground and heaved out everything in my stomach. When nothing was left to puke out I tried to stand up and I fell
back down and dry heaved a few more times. Thomas and Ann finally helped me to my feet and Ann pressed a bottled water into my hands. I took some tentative sips and when it stayed down I went ahead and downed the rest of it. Staying hydrated is important, especially in the apocalypse. I hit the unlock button on the key and heard a satisfying click as it unlocked.

  I got in the driver’s side and Ginny and Thomas hopped in the other side. Chrissie made her way into the back seat. I started to put the key in, feeling pretty manly up in this jacked up big ass truck, and realized it was a stick shift. I can do a lot of things. I’m a manly guy. I played rugby one summer. I never figured out the whole stick shift thing and really didn’t see why you would want all that hassle when you could just buy an automatic for pretty much the same amount of money.

  “Can’t drive a stick?” Ann asked.

  I ignored her. Staring at the stick shift a little bit longer. Finally, I asked, “Anyone know how to drive a stick shift really good? I can do it but I’m a little rusty.”

  Ann got out and walked around to the driver’s side. She opened the door and I climbed out. She climbed in. I walked around to the passenger side feeling about two feet tall. I climbed in and shut the door, Ann had already started the truck and had just been waiting on me. Giving me a smile, she put the truck in gear and drove around to the front. Reeves was out of the car and sitting on the trunk. Ginny had been putting all of our stuff together. Seeing us now she smiled real big and ran over to the truck.

  Ann rolled down her window and Ginny saw her smiling.

  “Can’t drive a stick, can he?” Ginny asked.

  “Can you?” I fired back.

  “Yep.”

  This feminism crap has gotten way out of hand.

  Entry 10: Gator bait

  We all jumped out and started getting everyone loaded into the truck. We went ahead and made the back seat into a cubby for Reeves to recover in. He tried to insist that Thomas and Chrissie squish in with him but we sent them and Ginny to sit in the back of the truck. We threw all the gear we had into the back of the truck. Once everyone was loaded in I got out and asked Thomas to borrow his stair metal pole thing. He handed it to me and I walked over to the mini mart and hit the window with it as hard as I could. It turns out you do not have to hit a window all that hard with a metal pole to break it and I ended up flinging the whole pole into the mini mart.

  I turned around and waved at everybody to let them know I was good. I listened and did not hear any screams or yells of anything headed towards me so I used my sword to clean the glass shards away and break the last pieces sticking up on the bottom. Ginny came over to join me and I hoisted her up so she could get in the store. She started handing me stuff through the window. The first things she handed me were a bunch of wet wipes packed for individual sale. Ann had moved the truck closer so I handed those out to everyone while waiting for Ginny to hand me more loot through the window.

  Ginny handed me a bunch of random canned food. I didn’t feel too bad about breaking the window and stealing stuff when I saw the $4.25 price tag for a can of Spaghettios with franks. Not even the mini meatballs, we’re talking the cheap ass franks can. The people who’d owned this place where definitely dirt balls. My gorge rose a bit when I thought of the still liquidy body in the back I had searched for the keys to the truck. No matter how much you screw your customers no one deserves to die and have their bodies left like that. Maybe lawyers.

  Ginny had run out of food to hand me and she shifted her efforts to handing me waters and soda through the window. I flung them all into the back of the truck after handing Ann a grape flavored propel. I figured that would earn me some points.

  “Yuck. The flavored ones are gross warm. Just give me a regular one when you get a minute.”

  Anyway, I continued to help Ginny loot the store while everyone else kept watch. She was now systematically handing me pretty much anything she thought may prove useful. I was pretty excited about the plastic gas cans, assuming we could ever find somewhere to fill a couple of them up at. When she started handing me spare windshield wiper blades I told her it was time to come out so we could get moving.

  I helped her out, making sure she didn’t manage to cut herself on all the glass that was still laying all over the place. She turned around and handed me one of the last things she had snagged. A map of Central Florida. I was stoked.

  I went back in the front of the car. Reeves had opened the little sliding windows to the back of the car so we could all talk. Ann was leaving the truck idling because we were all pretty much paranoid about everything at this point. I sat down and started looking at the map.

  Everyone had quieted down and were kind of looking up at me.

  “Can you read a map?” Ann asked.

  I looked at her and raised my voice a bit so everyone could hear, “Ok, so we are right here where 44 crosses I-4. Based on looking at this I have almost completed a full circle and ended up back at my apartment. We do not want to go there. Everyone still good with Tennessee as a next step?”

  Ann nodded and everyone else either nodded or shook their heads yes.

  “Ok, so we need to decide where to get on the turnpike at to go North, we want to try and avoid big towns and cities and places where the road is going to be all screwed up. I would say we just take 44 but I’ve never been that way on 44 and it looks like it may just be a small road going through a lot of swampy places. We can’t use this truck to pull around wrecks and such if it is super swampy. On the plus side, not a lot of people living in swamps.” I looked around to see if anyone had any comments.

  No one seemed like they wanted to say anything so I kept going, “Or, we can keep going West on I-4 which is pretty much South until we got into some more populated areas but there are some toll roads off of the Maitland exit that may be good and they lead right to the turnpike. I’m leaning towards just heading out on 44 until we get to the turnpike. We go through some cities but I think it is less of a risk than going through Maitland and a lot of it looks like it is through a swamp.”

  In the distance, over the idling noise made by the truck we heard a building roar that we all knew was caused by a large group of zombies coming this way. That sped up the decision making.

  Ann said, “Anything that gets me going a different direction from that noise as soon as possible is good with me. If we do the swamp route we just need to make sure we have plenty of gas to make it to the next round of civilization. Did you find a hose in the mini mart? Siphon some of these cars around here and see if we can fill up on gas before we roll out. We probably have a good five or ten minutes before death takes this exit.”

  Ginny held up a hose from the back seat and pointed at the plastic gas cans. I jumped back out of the truck and we ran with Thomas over to the first car. It was parked directly behind the cars involved in the fender bender that looked like it had been responsible for some serious death on the overpass. The door was hanging open and the keys were still in the ignition. Thomas fumbled around in the car until the little gas hatch popped open. I shoved the hose into the tank as far as it would go and then sucked on the hose. Nothing. This one was a dud.

  We ran quickly to a funky looking cube shaped car. All the doors on it were locked so we left it alone and moved to an Altima that had been in the center of the accident. We opened the gas hatch, I unscrewed the gas cap, stuck in the tube, sucked, drank about two ounces of gas before I was able to get it aimed into the plastic container. It filled up the container about a third of the way. We tried a truck that was in front of the Altima and got nothing. We were headed to check out a crappy looking corolla with tinted windows when my radio went off and Ann was on it saying it was time to roll.

  We grabbed our junk and headed for the truck. The noise of the oncoming Zombies had reached a crescendo now which explained why Ann was making the call that it was time to go. I opened the passenger door and climbed in while Thomas and Ginny got situated in the back. Ann looked over at me and I pointed to
the left.

  “No. Wait a second. So, we were going South on I-4 and we got off the onramp and went right so now we should be on the West side of the ramp so yeah. Left. No. Go right.”

  Ann shook her head sadly and headed right. I stared around looking for street signs and hoping like crazy that I was right. It was only about ten at night and I wanted us to keep moving until about six AM then depending on where we ended up at, we could rest during the day. This route would take us through a few cities but I was hoping that if we stuck to some of these smaller roads and stayed out in the middle of nowhere that may work out for us. Ann continued driving and I sighed in relief as I saw the signs coming up that matched where I thought we were on the map.