Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  We huddled in the center of the men’s room while the walls creaked and the roof shuddered. It was pitch black inside and I had asked Reeves to not crack open a light or anything since if a Zombie wandered in I did not want them to easily see us. It was too loud for us to talk with the wind whipping past the entrances making eerie noises like the moans of lost souls. The noises were freaky but then the noises stopped and the room started filling up with wind.

  Debris and sand whipped us all in the face as the wind velocity inside the room continued to increase. It didn’t let up. We all maneuvered ourselves into stalls. I thought at first it was great that Ann and I were sharing a stall, until her hair whipping in the wind had pretty much turned all my skin raw anywhere near her head. It just kept blowing. Thunder rolled, at one point it sounded like a freight train went through the parking lot.

  A year ago I would have been sitting in my apartment watching all this on the weather channel. Or, it if it had looked dangerous and come within a hundred miles of my apartment I would have been sitting in an evacuation center eating some free food and watching the action on the weather channel. The storm coming would have been on every TV outlet, every five minutes, until the storm was actually here at which point there would have been 24-hour coverage of the storm. Every down tree and mud puddle would have been filmed by a reported in bright yellow rain gear. Each station would have tried to scoop the other on the first ‘death’ to occur because of the storm. Afterwards the stations would boost their ad revenue with headlines like ‘remembering the victims of Hurricane Ann’.

  I decided on the hurricane being named Ann while being sandblasted by her hair in the bathroom stall. It was another tradition of storm season in Florida. They started naming the hurricanes with a name starting with the letter ‘A’ then moving on up. If they had 24 storms there could be a Hurricane Zoey. For all we know this was the seventh storm of the season and the other had just missed us. Forever in my head this would absolutely be Hurricane Ann though.

  Eventually the storm died down. It didn’t end up killing us so that was good. We walked outside and it looked like a bomb had gone off. Our golf carts were gone. We could not find them anywhere. Which sucked because we’d left a ton of supplies on them. Cars were smashed everywhere. The earth was torn out of the ground where a twister had evidently set down to do some extra destruction. Thomas pointed at the other side of the building where the women’s room was and we all saw it was missing most of its roof. Walking over and looking in, the stalls were twisted wrecks of jagged metal with some scattered porcelain skeletons still clinging to the tiled floor. Good thing we had opted for the men’s room.

  We backed out of the women’s room and continued strolling around the wreckage. Looking for anything that may be useful we went back into the truck parking lot. There were only two trucks left standing after the storm. A dinged to hell Penske moving truck and an eighteen-wheeler with custom mud flaps. I ruled out the eighteen-wheeler, Reeves and Ann could probably drive it but there would not be enough room for us all in the cab and it ran on diesel which would be harder to find than regular gas.

  The Penske was promising. It would run on unleaded gas. It was meant to be easy for anyone to drive. It had plenty of space in the back for us to hide or rest. It may even have some useful tools and furniture in the back. We’d just need to beat the lock off with something and gain access. I moved into the cab to see if I could maybe find the key. My eye was driving me crazy, itching like I had gotten a bunch of fire ants underneath the mildewing bandages. I absently rubbed it while Ann was going through the dashboard. She looked over at me and smiled. Dammit! My bottle of scope had been on that golf cart that blew away!

  We couldn’t find the keys to the moving truck. We tried bashing on the back of it a little bit but were unable to get the lock on the back to come off either. We gave up before making enough noise to attract any Zombies who may be in the area and went in a search of a different set of wheels. In the cars parking spaces at the front of the rest stop, there were three usable looking cars left. A big pickup truck, a minivan, and a bright pink Volkswagen bug with big dreamy looking flowers on it. The pickup truck and the minivan were both locked with no owner in site. We closed in on the minivan and saw a bunch of gunk on the inside of the windshield.

  I went around to the driver’s side of the bug and grabbed the door handle. I waited for Ann and Reeves to get in place in case the previous owner was still sitting in there and decided to come after me. I yanked open the door handle and stepped back as a decapitated body came sprawling out on the ground. A shotgun clattered onto the ground as well. I picked up the shotgun after verifying nothing else was going to come flying out of the car and attack me. I took a closer look at the body lying there.

  It was hard to tell the age of the corpse since the back of the skull had been blown out causing the face to get all deformed looking. Scanning the guys body, you could see he had leather chaps over jeans and a belt with all kinds of knives and crap hanging off it. The backseat of the bug looked like it had a couple of assault rifles with boxes of ammo sitting in them. Looking back down at the body I saw where he had a few bite marks on his exposed forearms. There could be more but I wasn’t planning on turning him over to find out. In the places that he wasn’t bitten, he had some cool looking, colorful tattooed sleeves that went from his wrists up into his t-shirt and presumably covered the rest of his body as well.

  We had just started pulling the body out of the way so we could check out the car better when Ginny, who was watching our backs while we focused on the car, whispered loudly.

  “We’ve got company.”

  Entry 33: The Pink Angels

  We all went on the defensive once Ginny let us know we had company. We’d all been leading with our melee weapons like the swords and such but looking up we saw the group pulling into the rest area did not look like SCA participants so we flipped to guns. I told everyone to keep the guns pointed at the ground until I gave the order or we were threatened. Two of the bikes split off from the others and I saw them stop and the riders climbed up on top of cars and got setup to cover the area. Pretty much the same thing we would do before pulling into an area like this. Especially as messed up looking as this place was following that twister.

  The riders looked like your typical seventies movies bikers. Big mustaches, tattoos, bandanas and weapons. The weapons took them out of the ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’ movie biker genre and moved them over to the ‘Mad Max’ looking scenarios instead. The three who were on foot started moving quickly and efficiently into the mass of cars. They seemed coordinated and professional about it. We waited. Ginny and Thomas were both on cars, Ginny with a shotgun and Thomas just kind of sitting there holding a metal stair pole. I considered trying to find him a working weapon but didn’t want to be caught trying to dig for a weapon when these guys rolled up on us.

  They came straight for us. Rifle barrels held high as they moved in on us. We kept our weapons lowered. When they got within about ten yards of us they stopped.

  The one in the middle yelled out to us, “Put your weapons down and we will not kill you.”

  I motioned for everyone to bring there weapons up and heard the noise as everyone shifted to a much more aggressive stance with their guns.

  “Put your weapons on the ground and we won’t kill you!” I yelled back, continuing, “Or, how about we all keep our weapons and we have a civil conversation instead of killing each other. Up to you, but we are not putting our weapons down.”

  “Depends. How is the man who was driving that pink bug?” The mustached, leather wearing, large assault rifle aiming man tossed back at us.

  “He’s about as dead as you get.” I started out, then realized that probably was not the most tactful approach since it sounded like the guy was asking for a reason. I hastily added, “We didn’t kill him though. Looks like he did it himself with this shotgun.”

  The man who had been doing all the talking up to this point made a m
otion and one of the other men began moving through the cars around us. “I’m sending over someone to check out what you just told us. If you do anything we don’t like we will cut you down.”

  Sounded fair. We waited until the guy suddenly popped up from between two cars with an Assault Rifle pointing at the ground. The man walked over to where we had dragged the guys body out of the car. He stared down at it for a minute than walked over to the bug and looked inside it. What had been a hard warrior face when he came up on us had crumbled into the face of an older man who had just seen a dead friend. The experience had normalized him and I felt a kinship with him then and also felt the fear and anticipation of a soon to be battle dissipate.

  The guy held up his hand and made a motion. About thirty seconds later the other two members of the party strode into our circle. They had their weapons pointed at the ground now, as did we. They both took the time to walk over and check out the corpse of the pink bug driver. One of them opened the back door on the bug and pulled out a small container of gas.

  They all walked over to me and the original one stuck out his hand for me to shake. I shook it, introducing Ann, Thomas, Reeves and Ginny. The man introduced himself and the others.

  “I’m Frank Tomlinson, the other two here with me are Jorge and Twitch. We got Meetch and Rory back out there on watch, covering us. I’m the leader of this little gang. The guy who was driving the pink bug there was Butch.”

  “What’s with the gas?” Reeves asked.

  “We have been burning our own when they fall. Started out doing it since we didn’t know if they’d turn or not. Now, we’re pretty sure they won’t turn when they die but it’s just become a thing we do. We started out with about twenty of us headed this way and we’re down to five now, there’s been a lot of pyres. We were down in the Keys when this all started. Big, gay, motorcycle enthusiasts rally.”

  Oh! That explained the odd assortment of pink that seemed to make up large parts of the road beaten clothing worn by the otherwise very masculine, macho looking men.

  Jorge and Twitch had pulled a blanket out of the car and rolled the corpse, Butch, onto the blanket and started pulling it over towards the grassy median separating the rest stop from the highway. Reeves went over to help them. I offered up that we could stand watch and make sure nothing was coming while they sent off their friend.

  “We appreciate that and I’m going to go ahead and take you up on it.” Franks held up his hand and made a motion, I saw the other guys coming in from their posts on the cars on the perimeter of the parking lot. They all helped to get Butch moved into position and it looked like they were each taking the time to say a few words. After a few minutes, someone flipped a match onto Butch and his soul was carried to a warrior’s rest on the flames and smoke of his battle-scarred body as it was slowly burnt.

  Frank walked back over shortly thereafter. He walked up to me and pulled me off to the side after confirming I was the leader for the group.

  “Thanks for watching us while we sent him off. I didn’t even know Butch six months ago and today it feels like I lost a brother, we’ve just been through so much since this all started. I had to walk away from the fire, always smells like a barbeque to me and that’s just fucked up. How’d you find him here?”

  I told Frank about getting to the rest stop and finding all the dead Zombies laying around as the storm was coming in on us. We guessed that Butch had taken out the Zombies and then taken himself out when he got bit so he wouldn’t turn.

  Frank cleared his throat, “Yeah, that sounds about right. He took off yesterday right when the storm was starting to cook up to come back here and check for his freakin’ wallet. He had pictures of his sister and parent s and he couldn’t stand to lose them. Made the excuse we need to refill our drinking water. It was only about an hour back the way we had come and we had this gay ass looking car we had found that he took. When we came through here the first time, there hadn’t been a single Zombie. Guessing they heard our bikes and came to check it out but did not get here until after we left.”

  Frank paused for a minute then asked a question that seemed to be weighing on him pretty heavy. “The boy with you, Thomas?” I nodded that he had the name right and Frank continued, “Those bite marks on him? Those from a Zombie?” I nodded.

  “Yeah, Thomas got bit a while back. We expected him to turn. We’ve seen another girl who got bit turn into a Zombie a few hours later but Thomas hasn’t shown any signs and it has been over a week now. We ran into a Navy Corpsman who told us the infection had stopped being air born already so we’re wondering if it has stopped being transmitted through bites too.”

  I saw what Frank was getting at. If the Zombie bites weren’t necessarily always a death sentence, then there was a chance Butch had killed himself for no reason. Frank asked me to keep that info to myself for a few to let them get over Butch. He did plan on telling them soon though, to keep it from happening again.

  From across the parking lot I heard Thomas yelling something. Ginny was running over towards us and the rest of the motorcycle gang was moving this way rapidly as well. Ginny was running and spinning her finger around over her head. That was our symbol for time to get our shit together and get out of here, fast. It was not a gesture any of us took lightly because it normally meant there was a whole bunch of something nasty headed our way. I started to jump in the pink bug and see if I could get it started.

  I was stopped by Frank firmly planting his hand in the middle of my chest.

  “That car has all our extra weapons and ammo in it. We have a bunch in our saddlebags too but what’s in there belongs to us. Just want to make sure you understand and are cool with that.” I nodded at him, he moved his hand. “Then go ahead and pile in and we’ll roll out of here.”

  We all crammed into the tiny bug. Reeves and I took the front seat. Reeves was driving since my eye was killing me and I’d developed a major headache. Ann, Thomas and Ginny had all squeezed into the backseat. Carefully moving guns and ammo and other supplies out of the way. There was a cache of water bottle back there as well and Ann handed us each one of them. I cracked open the water bottle as Reeves was guiding the bug through the parking lot, past the smoldering earthly remains of Butch and out on the highway.

  Frank and his guys were already out on the road. Their bikes were loud. Coming up the road from the South it looked like our uninvited entourage had finally caught up with us. They must have kept right on going on the road as the hurricane whipped around them. The road was covered in them. The leaders had started running towards us as the roar of the supped-up Harleys caught their attention. Frank and the others had lined up across the road and were taking careful aim and picking off the leaders while they waited for us to catch up so we could get moving.

  Reeves went past them with a wave and we saw them all falling in behind us, then they passed around us, Frank lead, followed by Jorge and Twitch, Meetch and Rory rode guard behind us. I wasn’t sure if that was for our protection or to keep us from stealing there supply filled car, I was thinking it was a little bit of both.

  Looking ahead we saw taillights flashing on the motorcycles. We did not have communications with them so we did not know why they were slowing down. They must have Walkies built into their bikes as they seemed very coordinated. I had been wondering how they had survived this long driving those noisy ass bikes and now I had a premonition. They had been driving North this whole time and had never experienced having to go backwards. They may not even realize they would have created a wake of Zombies chasing after them. Or, also possible, they had forgotten the possibility of building up a life crushing mob behind them in the rush to find their friend after the hurricane had ripped through.

  Forgotten or not, there was a lot of Zombies on the road up ahead. We had left behind the ones following us from the rest stop but they were bound to be coming back into view anytime now. The bikers just sat there. They must have been figuring out what their plan was going to be. Frank rode over to
us and Reeves rolled down his window to listen.

  “We’re going to try and go straight through the ones up ahead and hope there’s not too many of them. If it does look like there may be too many of them when we get close we’re going to ditch our bikes and run into the woods as fast as we can. You guys stick close and if we need to ditch we’ll help grab out all the weapons we can from the car. Especially ammo, this may require a lot of ammo.”

  Frank roared off, rifle sitting on his handlebars. Reeves started moving the car forward. I asked if anyone had any better ideas. Everyone agreed with what Frank had said, expect Ginny said we should hit the woods right now and just start running.

  Reeves was pure focus as he moved forward, on top of the Zombies running towards us there was all kinds of debris blown all over the road from the hurricane. I’m guessing there will not be a cleanup crew anytime soon either. That’s another thing all native Floridians are used to watching is the newscasters showing the post storm damage and talking about all the power companies and others dispatched to clear up roads and fix power lines and such. This time, there will just be a bunch of crap on the road until the next storm chips away and adds more crap until the road running through here is a distant memory.