Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  He had a point. He had a definite point, anyone on this team would sacrifice themselves for the group. We had grown that tight. The reverse was true too, though. Every single one of us was willing to risk our lives to keep any of us from sacrificing themselves.

  “Thomas.” I spoke up from the bench and got everyone’s attention. “I agree, if we can’t think of another way out of this then your idea makes a lot of sense.”

  I held up my hand for silence while Ginny and Ann took turns telling me exactly why they thought I was a cruel idiot who needed to immediately shut up before I got another concussion from one of them. Ginny finally shut up after asking me if I had enjoyed torturing kittens when I was younger. I don’t know how that was applicable but she was obviously fired up and ready to fight.

  “Thomas, right now we have an easy escape of cutting the rope and hoping the Navy assholes don’t see us before we can disembark somewhere. I’d rather get out here and get back in the truck and continue on our merry way but we are, by no means, backed against a wall quite yet so I think we got a little time before a sacrifice like the one you are offering is needed. We don’t want to lose you.” Ann and Ginny were looking at me with a few degrees less hostility now.

  I looked back at Thomas, out of my one working eye, “We’re all messed up and tired. But we’re all going to stick together and get through this. Now, how do you really feel? Like, no bullshit, how do you feel?”

  “I feel Ok. The place on my wrist and neck that got bit hurts and my wrist hurts and basically my whole body hurts but that’s like par for the course at this point.”

  “Do you feel hot, like fever hot?” I asked him.

  “No. I feel normal as far as that goes. The bites itch and they hurt.”

  “Ok. Ann, you probably already did this but jam whatever antibiotics we have down his throat. Thomas, when Lily turned, she had a very high fever. Until I see blue veins popping out on you and red eyes staring back at me I’m not giving up on you. None of us are. If that happens we’ll do what needs to be done but until then no more talk of running off. Just to make sure you don’t try and be a hero, Ginny can you tie wrap him somewhere comfortable and watch him? When you get bored staring into those dreamy eyes of his let me know and one of us will watch him but I want a 4-hour watch on him until we decide he’s good.”

  I looked around and saw everyone nodding. Reeves had walked back to where he could hear as well. His head was bowed with worry. I kept on.

  “Thomas, you don’t need to cause a distraction to be a hero or end your life the right way. You’ve proven yourself about a million times at this point, buddy. None of us are virologists or doctors, but I figure there’s always a chance you’re not going to catch the virus. For all we know the virus has already burned out and isn’t even contagious anymore. That corpsman told us it already went from being airborne to not begin airborne. The plan is, we chill on this boat or a day or two, watch Zombies dive into the shark tank and become ‘chums’ and see what happens. Unless anybody has anything else I’m going to slip back into a coma now.”

  Entry 29: Adrift

  I had barely had time to slip back into my comatose state when the screams started. I opened my eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight. I tried sitting up again and this time managed to do it without puking. I looked through the windows and opening leading up the bow of the boat where the noise seemed to be coming from. There were about eight Zombies standing on the dock staring at us and screaming their heads off. They looked like they wanted to run and jump at us but knew they wouldn’t make it.

  The screams were attracting a lot of attention. In the light of day, a lot more Zombies were headed our way than we had to avoid the night before. They had been asleep in the bushes and surrounding houses, plus the house we had left full of them after our escape yesterday. There was enough of them to make it feel like the earth was shaking. When they hit the dock, there was a roll of thunder that did not stop as more and more of them ran onto the hard, wooden surface.

  They didn’t stop when they got to the end of the dock either. They leapt. They did not make it but there was a lot of them. Enough that their bodies started filling up the water between us and the dock. The ones jumping now were crawling and running across there drowning comrades to get to us. Reeves stood at the bow of the boat swinging his bat like a pendulum just constantly trying to keep them away. Ann and Ginny ran to join him; Thomas was tie wrapped to a pole by the driver’s chair. I had stopped trying to help immediately following concussions. I had learned it just really wasn’t very helpful to stumble around speaking incoherently like a drunk at a family reunion.

  The Zombies continued to pour off the pier.

  “Cut the rope!” I yelled as loud as I could. It felt like a gong was going off in my head from the action. No one could have possibly heard me anyway. The screaming had hit an octave and amplitude that was pulsating through all of us. A primal fear and need to flee crept up on me. There was nowhere to flee to. I kept yelling to cut the rope and tried getting up and going to tell them but just collapsed on the ground.

  I pulled myself painfully up by Thomas. I looked at him. He looked healthy.

  “Not turning Blue, am I?” He asked loudly, staring intently at me from eyes that did not have the slightest bit of red in them.

  “Looking good.” I mouthed at him, not wanting to try yelling and make the gonging in my head come back.

  I noticed we were drifting backwards. The screaming was reaching a higher pitch and now that I was partially standing up I had a better view of the Zombies all throwing themselves off the dock. It was like I imagined the lemmings do it when they all run off the cliffs in an undulating wave. The ones who were afraid of the water were still standing there yelling. They kept yelling as we drifted away from them.

  Reeves and Ann joined us in the back. Ginny was messing around with the ropes and such up in the bow. I asked them if they had heard me yelling to cut the rope and they said no. They had been fighting to keep the Zombies from pulling themselves into the boat when Ginny had started untying the rope. If she hadn’t thought of it there was a good chance, we would not have made it. As it as they had just finished knocking off a couple of clingers who refused to let go.

  We were now drifting towards the guys who would kill us for being in their water. The shore was too far away to swim and the boat seemed to be heading for the middle of the damn river just to make it even harder. I had no ideas. I asked and no one else had any ideas either. Ginny was still in the bow squaring everything away and looking contemplative. I decided to leave her alone to contemplate since that may be our only hope. I saw her opening up hatches and looking around at stuff. That seemed promising.

  She walked slowly back to where we were. We all stared at our little genius expectantly.

  “I got nothin’.” She said. “You guys coming up with any ideas? Other than floating until we run into the Navy and they kill us?”

  Great. Basically, we were screwed. Last time we had ran into those guys in a boat at least we had an engine that worked. This time we were dead in the water. Hopefully not literally.

  “How about throwing on life jacket sand taking a swim? Sure, it’s really far and the water is full of alligators and sharks that are getting used to eating humans and when we finally make it to the beach we’ll probably be attacked by a bunch of Zombies but I’m not seeing a lot of alternatives?” I looked around at everyone.

  Ann looked contemplative, “Jumping in now is probably suicide since we’re getting paced by the Zombies on the shore but if we give it an hour and if we drift a bit closer to the shore I say we go for it. We just need to all be ready for when it looks like the right time.”

  “Sounds like it sucks about as much as our typical plans.” Reeves joined in the conversation. “I do want to point out to everyone that Thomas is still a nice healthy pink color!”

  There was much clapping and obvious joy in everyone’s eyes. Thomas looked relieved. The longer he “stay
ed pink” the less likely he was to be infected with the virus. The bites were looking nasty on him but so would any big human bite on anyone whether they were infected or not. Without much else to do we all found a place to relax and commenced doing so. It was going to be a long day. After slowly running through about a paragraph in the Zournal I had turned it off and put it back in its containers in disgust. I was so concussed that I couldn’t remember what I wrote ten seconds after I wrote it. I needed to rest for a few more days now.

  Maybe that would happen after we did the mile-long swim through the shark infested waters. At least I had that to look forward to.

  Entry 30: I am Ironman

  I can’t believe I’m standing here waiting to jump into this river again. When we make it to shore I’m going to ask Reeves which way is West and we’re going to walk that way until we’re far away from all these damn rivers and alligators and sharks. We’ll just follow the moss or the North star or do whatever it is that Peter Pan does to get to Neverland but I’ll be damned if I have to jump into this liquid horror show again.

  We had all donned big orange bulky life vests. There were three extra on board so we used those to put some of our clothes and weapons on. We all tried to keep some knives attached to us in case we needed to fight off alligators or sharks. We all knew that wasn’t happening but at least we’d be able to inflict some damage on whatever ate us alive while we were trying to swim to shore.

  Thomas still looked fine. We’d been talking about that and thinking about each of our stories from the beginning. While recognizing our theories were in no way scientific or based on any of us having ever scored higher than a “B” in Biology, we still thought we may be onto something. Reeves, Ginny, and I had all been quarantined when the virus had first kicked off. I had been hanging out in my apartment, Ginny had been hauling ass with Gunny for the old house to stay in, and Reeves had been with his unit sealed up inside Publix walking around with a respirator on. Ann and Thomas had been on a cruise ship.

  There is no fresh air on a cruise ship. Ann and Thomas should have both gotten sick. Beth, Ann’s recently deceased sister, should also have caught the virus. The fact that none of them did had us thinking that their family had an immunity to the virus. The rest of us had been isolated from other people so it made sense we did not get it. Thinking back, I realized John and Rhonda had also self-quarantined as soon as the news started saying to and they had not turned either. Maybe that explained why Thomas was still walking around happily with two big chunks of flesh ripped out of his body by a couple of Zombies. Or, maybe it was because the virus died out after a little while from being contagious. Or, most likely, it was for a reason I would never figure out or understand if someone did try and explain it to me.

  According to the corps man who had helped patch up Ginny the virus had stopped being air borne a long time ago. I had no idea how any of this worked but I was thinking maybe it also stopped being saliva born after a while? Either way, Thomas was looking good. I was not planning on anyone else getting bitten to try out my theories. Reeves did throw his theory into the ring that it must be military though. His reasoning behind that being if an enemy is developing a weapon for the purposes of taking over your land they want it to strike fast and lethally while preserving the natural resources. Then, they want to be able to walk in and mop up the survivors and victims’ easily without having to worry about catching it themselves. When he put it like that it made scary sense.

  We were approaching a point where we thought we could jump and swim for it. The shore was looking pretty desolate and we were only about eighty yards away from it. We had discussed sticking together to try and look as big as possible. We also were all going to try and swim without splashing. I’m not sure how long I could breast stroke it for but I was going to find out. We all stripped down to our underwear and put our clothes into a garbage bag we attached to one of the extra lifejackets. This lead to another round of jokes about doing the “breast stroke.” Once everyone had a good laugh about that, by everyone I mean Reeves and I, we went over to the back of the boat and stared into the water.

  It looked dark and forbidding. I had zero desire to stick any part of my body into it. There was no choice though and since I was the fearless leader I went ahead and slipped into it off the boat as quietly as I could. The water was cold. I kept expecting something to grab my ankle and pull me under. Reeves handed down the extra lifejackets with stuff on them and I tied them off to myself and waited. Reeves came in next and repeated the procedure. Then came Ann and Thomas. I had started slowly stroking for the shore, pulling along the rope with all the gear attached to it. I was looking into the water ahead of me when I saw a small fish go by. Then I realized the small fish was a hand and the hand was attached to the body of a semi-submerged dead person.

  I turned around to try and slow the others down so they didn’t have to live with the image that I had just seen. I saw Ginny was still standing on the boat. Ann and Thomas were both trying to talk her into getting in. She looked completely terrified. The last time she had been in the water a shark had munched on her leg. Common sense as well as sheer terror were both holding her back. Luckily, I was only dealing with the sheer terror part of that equation having suspended my own common sense to try and make it through the apocalypse. I started treading water and waited to see if they’d be able to get her in.

  She got in. She seemed to go catatonic with fear when she got in but the life vest held her up. She was trembling with terror. That was one of the bravest girls I knew. Imagine being that scared of something and then doing it anyway. She was trembling so hard I could actually see her body vibrating from over where I was. They put her hands on a life jacket and we all started breast and side stroking away to move towards the shore line. Ginny had her eyes shut and was just hanging onto the life jacket and probably wishing for a few valiums. No problem, after all she had done for us offering up a little tow was no big deal.

  We made it to the shore line with no more incidents other than my hand rubbing against another submerged dead guy. This time my fingers ran through his hair and it was lucky I was in the water in my underwear because I think I shit myself when his head came bobbing up to the surface afterwards. I swam around. Motioning for everyone else to avoid the bloated corpse as well. It occurred to me for about the millionth time that Reeves had done me no favors by endorsing me as “the boss.”

  We made it to the shore and climbed up the embankment through a bunch of weeds and mud. We broke out the garbage bag and changed into dry clothes. I flung my underwear into the river and went commando in my shorts. I already had the king of all crotch rashes from all the wet underwear and shorts I’d been running around in so whatever. We all remerged from our spots in the bushes where we had gotten dressed. We decided to just leave the life jackets in a pile there and start hiking.

  It looked like we had washed ashore on a very industrialized island. Maybe a shipyard or something like that. There were large stacks of containers all around us. The parking lot was empty but we saw a whole line of golf carts by one of the buildings. We walked over and saw they were all sitting by a shed. The shed had a flimsy wooden door on it that we kicked down without even talking about it. Inside the shed were containers of gas and the keys for all the golf carts. I didn’t even know they made gas powered golf carts but it seemed like a great idea to me now. We loaded up all the extra containers onto the golf carts and took three of them for a spin. Thomas and Ginny paired up, Ann and I paired up, and Reeves got to ride solo with extra supplies shoved into this cart.

  We didn’t have the weapons to take on more than five or six Zombies at once so we were going to need to depend on speed. The golf carts had some serious Zip. We zipped our asses right on out of there and up the road. We passed a ship that looked like it had been about half built when everyone decided to go on a building hiatus due to the ‘blue fever’ epidemic. We zipped right on over to a bridge off that god forsake island and kept right on going. We had
built up a following as we drove of random Zombies but none of them had been able to keep up. It had taken a good hour to find our way off the island but we all still had a solid half tank of gasoline at the least.

  Once we got somewhere safe I was going to signal a stop so we could all get a top off. We went over the bridge, maneuvering in between broke down cars, at one point having to get out and manhandle a car out of the ay in order to get the carts through. Totally worth it. There is no way we would have gotten a car through. The carts themselves had Plexiglas windows in the front and then the rest of it was covered by a tarp you could either leave up or let hang down. We all had ours up at the moment but I was thinking down may provide at least a little protection from Zombies trying to jump in. Especially if we tied them downs real tight on the sides.

  Coming off the bridge we got our first real test. The noise from the golf carts was pretty minimal but it had attracted some unwanted attention. This was compounded by the fact that we had been impeded by the car we had to move out of our way. At the bottom of the bridge, running towards us, were about six Zombies. Not a huge number if we had a gun, or a car. Rolling towards them in golf carts they looked pretty intimidating. We had our car strategy down for dealing with Zombies so now we needed to figure out how to do similar in a golf cart. I really wished I had put the tarps down on the sides of the cart now.