A few days of R&R were just what the doctor was calling for. I put my head back and let the gentle waves of codeine lap away at my consciousness
Entry 24: Sleepyhead
The little girl looked up at me. The side of her head was bashed in and I could see the grey matter pulsating inside. She tried to reach out and touch my hand and I recoiled away from her in revulsion. Her face changed from sweet innocence to demonic hatred in less than heartbeat. I reached for my sword but it was gone. I was too petrified to get my legs to work. The girl sprang at me and I felt her hands grab me and her teeth start to sink into me as my fists uselessly beat against her. I was trying to scream for help but no noise came out.
She was grabbing my shoulder and shaking me. I swung my fist and felt it contact something. Blinking in pain I tried opening my eyes. Only one of them would open. I heard someone telling me to be quiet. I swung again but stopped myself before I made contact.
“Quiet their babe. You were having a nightmare, again. How are you feeling?” I recognized the voice as Ann’s and relaxed as she started running her fingers through my hair.
“Much better now, thanks. The drugs must be kicking in. Do we have any water?” I managed to croak all that out. “How long have I been sleeping? Looks like it is already night.”
Ann let out a low laugh. “You slept until night time. Then you slept the whole next day too. If you hadn’t been having a nightmare I would have been fine letting you sleep another day. Your body needs it. We all need it. Plus, there’s like a hundred Zombies wandering around over by the truck still, so we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Ann must have been hooking me up on the drugs because by the time she had finished talking I had already forgotten the nightmare and had boarded the express train back to dream land.
Entry 25: Movement is Life
The next time Ann shook me awake it was out of a deep slumber, undisturbed by any of the nightmare images I was becoming used to seeing anytime I slept more than three hours. I tried opening both eyes before realizing one was still covered in bandages and wraps. Once I had focused on her it looked like she was the one who had just had the nightmare.
“They know we’re here.” She whispered.
“Who knows we’re here?” I asked. Completely confused about who she was talking about. My first though was the Seal team had tracked us down again but in that case, we’d all be lying on the floor with our arms Zip tied behind us by now.
“The Zombies. I went for a walk around the house and started peeking out the curtains. We’re being surrounded. More and more Zombies keep showing up all around us. I looked out the front and there are a bunch of Zombies around the bodies we left out there.” Ann paused for a second and took a deep breath before continuing, “They’re eating the dead bodies.”
I let that sink in for a second. Closing my eyes and falling back asleep now a distant memory. I considered what Ann was saying. It sounded like maybe they were just over here to eat the bodies and the ones who found the bodies had attracted more of them to the free buffet. Regardless, there was not much we could do about it except sit quietly in the house and hope they went away. We only had one pistol left and only one extra lip with bullets in it for that. Fighting our way into this house had almost killed us and that had only been against four or five of the Zombies. If there were any more than that out there then no way we get through them alive with just one gun and some baseball bats.
“Ann.” I said, hoping to calm both of us down. “As long as they’re out there eating they should leave us alone. I think we’ll be safe as long as we stay quiet. Everyone knows to be quiet, right?” Ann nodded, so I kept talking. “As long as everyone knows to be quiet I don’t see where we are going to have an issue. We do need to think of a way out of here in case they do attack though, which I still think is very – “
Pounding on the back door stopped me from the rest of my explanation for why I thought we were safe in here. The pounding picked up and now the ones in the front of the house started pounding away as well. They must have thought the pounding from the back was coming from regular humans instead of their blue brothers and sisters. Glass broke. I sat up. The world spun around me but this time I forced back the nausea and got to my feet. Around me, Reeves and everyone were doing the same. I saw everyone strapping on packs and limbering up with their weapons. Reeves had my pistol in one hand and his bat in the other. Thomas handed me my sword.
They all looked to me. I had spent the last couple of days in a drug enabled period of unconsciousness and had no idea which way to go or what the best way to get out of here was. I looked over at Ginny, knowing she had probably already thought of this contingency and had a plan ready for it. She sighed when she saw me looking at her, once again being called upon to tell all of the adults what to do. I raised my eyebrows and made an impatient, hurry up and talk before we’re eaten by the crazy cannibal Zombies expression. Of course, my face was covered in bandages and only one eye was currently working so I can’t blame her for not instantly reading my expression.
Ginny pointed down the hallway towards the back of the house. “Let’s go down there and get up in the attic. The entrance is down here. Hopefully, once we get up there we can figure out a way to beat through the roof and then escape at night. We go outside now, in full daylight, surrounded by those things, we’re dead.”
Ginny didn’t wait to see if we agreed, she started jogging down the hall and the rest of us followed. Seemed like a much better plan than anything I had. Most of mine sounded more like desperate last stands in my head than actual plans for evasion and escape. Up ahead, Ginny had jumped in the air to grab the string to pull the ladder down for the attic access. Behind us, we heard the Zombies coming into the house through the windows and we heard the others still beating on the walls and doors.
Ginny scampered quickly up the ladder, followed by Thomas. Ann pushed me in front of her and I made it up, with a little help from both Ann and Thomas. Ann was about halfway up the ladder when I heard Reeves stat shooting. Zombies must have gotten ‘danger close’ in order for him to be doing that. Ann hesitated and we all yelled at her to get up the ladder. She ran up it with Reeves right behind her. Shooting into a crowd of Zombies that was trying to get to him in the hallway.
From the first shot the intensity of the howls and screaming had increased tenfold. The place went from the volume of a house with people yelling in it to the end zone stands at the super bowl when one team is trying to win by a field goal in overtime. The screams were chilling, they signified death and the smashing of bones. The rending of flesh and the drinking of hot blood. The Zombies seemed to be moving further and further from human and more and more into the demonic category. There humanity slipping away into complete insanity.
Reeves came hauling ass backwards up the ladder, shooting as he ran and swapping out the clips without losing a beat. Thomas and Ginny were each trying to hold him as he came up the ladder. He put out a huge burst of energy and ran up the stairs backwards while emptying the clip in to the crowd and screaming to pull up the ladder. If the Zombies got on it before we pulled it up, we were dead. I leaned in to try and help. Reeves shoulder clipped me in the face and the pain and shock of that made me reel backwards. One of my feet went in between two of the wooden beams and right through the ceiling. I yelled out as my crotch slammed into the wooden beam and I started to slide sideways where I would have fallen further through the ceiling.
It was dark and hot in the attic. Thomas was able to yank the ladder up before any Zombies got on it thanks to Reeves having emptied the clip into the crowd. Thomas ripped the ladder up with complete disregard for any pain and suffered for it as the ladder slammed into his wrist. It was the opposite wrist from the one he had broken, so at least it wasn’t the same arm again. Thomas sat back hard with a loud sigh and noticed me trying to pull my leg out of the hole in the ceiling. He started to move to help me and the ladder started going back down again. A Zombie must have jumpe
d up and either grabbed the rope or just gotten it stuck on himself somehow. Either way, the attic door was doing its best to fly open again.
Reeves, Ann, Thomas, and Ginny all humped for the door and caught it before it could fully open. The Zombie that was stuck on it wasn’t shaking loose though. Must have been a hefty bastard based on the grunts and signs of stress coming from the crew as they all struggled to keep the door from going back down. I blinked back the tears of pain I had in my eyes from smashing my groin into the crossbeam and started trying to pull my foot up so I could go help.
Something grabbed my foot and started yanking it back and forth. I freaked the fuck out and started yanking and tugging on my leg like a pissed off midget trying to start a lawnmower. Whatever had hold of my leg managed to rip my sneaker off. Once the sneaker came off my leg came back through the hole with only minimal pain and I leaned back to get out of view of the hole. I could see light through the hole in the floor / ceiling and they had that air system in the attic that was also letting in light so we weren’t totally blind. The light from the hole my leg had been in kept going away as the Zombie down below was jumping up and trying to shove his hand through the hole to get back at the tasty leg that had been hanging there.
I drug myself over to where the others were struggling to hold open the attic access. The screaming from down below was so loud we couldn’t talk to one another. The house itself was vibrating and shaking as more and more Zombies squeezed into it. Intent on finding the source of the noise to devour. The gunshots would have attracted even more Zombies from eh surrounding area who would now be making their way here also. I had something I wanted to try. I stumbled over everybody and got to the side of the access door that the ladder would extend down once the door was pulled down.
I reached down and put both hands on the bottom rung of the ladder and pulled up and backwards as hard as I could. It turned out I didn’t need to do it as hard as I could since the ladder popped up pretty easily and I was able to extend it past the edge of the access door. Now the ladder was helping the others hold the door closed and if the door did get ripped open the ladder would not extend to the ground, hopefully. The access door was bouncing all over the place. I pictured the ground floor in my head and figured the one that was stuck on the rope must be getting mauled by the other ones trying to figure out how to get into the ceiling. This was causing the door access to shake.
The bottom of the door was now showing the Zombies downstairs if you looked through it at an angle. The access door was slowly being ripped out of the ceiling. We heard a loud pop and the door stopped shaking around. The rope must have finally broken. Damned rich people must use way better rope to access their attics than us mere middle classers. No way the rope on my parent’s attic would have held up that long. It barely held when we gently tugged on it to get into the attic. I guess rope is kind of like toilet paper. You don’t realize how much the cheap stuff sucks until you have the chance to use the good stuff.
The screaming was still too loud for us to hear anything. The walls were vibrating and shaking. I was hoping the people who built this house put as much effort into the walls as they did the strength of the rope to open the attic up with. On the other hand, I hoped they had done a shitty job on the roof so we wouldn’t have a hard time beating our way out. As long as the screaming was continuing below I saw no reason not to take advantage of all the noise for us to try and bang a hole in the roof to escape out of later. I took a couple of steps towards where the light was coming in from the attic ventilation ducts and then decided I should sit down.
I needed to rest for a few minutes. Adrenaline had carried me this far but it seemed to have all dissipated at once and now I was just deathly tired. I pulled out my ‘Zournal’ and turned the flashlight on. Thankful to Ann, or whoever had kept it charged and made sure it was in my pants pocket, with the Ziplocs and napkins shoved around it for protection. Since the access door was not bouncing all over the place and seemed secure at the moment I caught Reeves eye and motioned for him to come over. He left his post and crawled over to where I was. Raising my voice to be heard above the hellish din echoing throughout the enclosed attic space I told Reeves the plan.
He couldn’t hear me. He moved in closer and IO told him again with lots of pointing and pretending to hit the wall with a hammer and crap like that. He gave me a thumb up then crawled over to Thomas and took the stair pole weapon from him. Reeves crawled over to the ventilator panel at the end of the attic and started working on knocking it off. He got that done. Then he looked back at me and shook his head.
It must be too high for us to be able to get out of it easily. I pointed around at the rest of the roof and Reeves started crawling around to different spots and attacking the ceiling with the stair pole until he found one that opened up after a few hard pokes. He spent about an hour beating on it with a stair pole, gradually expanding it until the hole was big enough for him to squeeze through. He disappeared through the sun-drenched hole and came back a few minutes later and crawled over to me. He leaned in close to my ear to be heard above the racket. The noise was slowly diminishing in volume but was still pretty damn loud.
“Hey boss, we can get out on the roof. We’re surrounded by a pretty sizeable crowd. I didn’t go out too far since I didn’t want them to see me. The one side of the house towards the neighbor we have the truck parked at does have a decent sized tree on it. They have the limbs trimmed back from the house but I’m thinking we may be able to jump into that tonight and climb down, or at least fall slower. Then make our way over to the truck and haul ass out of here.”
I thought about it. I crawled back to where everyone else was. We played a telephone game where I whispered into Reeves ear, he whispered into Ginny’s ear, she whispered into Ann’s ear and then she whispered into Thomas ear. To keep it less confusing the first thing I sent down the line was to hold the questions and other ideas until I was done talking. Once that had gone down the chain I opened up about the plan Reeves and I had discussed. I tried to keep it simple given the way we had to relay info at the moment.
“Reeves made a hole we can get out of tonight. He looked and we’re surrounded. We’re hoping they break off tonight to go find places to sleep. We’ll go out the hole and go to the side of the house with the big tree on it. We go down the tree then over to the neighbor’s yard, get in the truck and haul ass.”
Ginny smiled at me when she got the plan. It was the same plan Gunny had used when we had to escape off the porch roof from that house back in the middle of nowhere. The same questions I had raised the first time came back to me from Reeves and Ann on the lines and I was able to easily answer their questions thanks to having been through this before. The best teacher really is experience. Or in this new world the chances are if you don’t make good decision and stick with them you’re destined to be traveling around in some obese blue dude’s belly. One thing I remember from last time was that the plan had gone to hell as we got to the vehicle at the end of it. I assumed the current scenario could very well work out the same but not a lot of options to get around that.
Then we shut up and lay there. We all knew we had made the cardinal sin with this house of getting comfortable and staying too long. Movement is life in this new normal and we needed to keep that in mind. Little things like getting your eyeball half ripped out or being bitten by a shark or jumping from speeding cars and doing a high-speed gymnast routine on the concrete shouldn’t be allowed to slow us down. We shut up because we had no idea if the Zombies could hear us or not. If they could then we did not want to get them more riled up. We wanted them to be meandering away from us.
I made a mental note to get what I was thinking of as a ‘Noise Grenade’ in my mind. My first thought was to get those wind-up alarm clocks or egg timers to be able to throw out away from us or leave behind us and when it went off it should attract the Zombies and keep them away from us. Then as I thought more about it I began considering iPhones, iPods and such. If we coul
d find a cell phone store and snag a bunch of those then we could record our voices yelling or taking on them and then make that sound the alarm and have it work similar to the egg timer idea. We had none of that stuff right now though, I wasn’t about to give up my Zournal as a distraction.
We waited. It got hot. We waited. Used to misery and sweating and stinking and being hungry and tired and thirsty we waited.
Entry 26: Out of the Frying pan…
The light from the hole Reeves had beat into the roof slowly died as the sun made its way around the earth, like it always had and always would, until the end, regardless if man is here or not. We gathered around the hole as the light died. The plan included staying as quiet as possible the entire time to avoid stirring up the Zombies we knew were probably going to next directly beneath us and all in the weeds surrounding the property. We had the Beretta Pistol but no Ammo left. We had the little bit of stuff we had been able to grab. We’d gotten a bit lazy in the couple of days we had been there and not kept our bags stocked for a quick getaway like we should have. It was a serious lapse in my leadership, considering I was in a coma like state about ninety percent of the last couple of days though I decided to cut myself some slack on it.
Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc Page 18
