Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  We were driving right at the horde coming towards us from the North. The ones coming at us form the other direction had not shown up yet so that was a plus. I looked ahead and I did not see how we were supposed to drive through them. There was just too many of them. Looked like at least a few hundred and the road itself was covered in branches and crap. No way they were going to be able to easily ride through all that. I wish we had communications with them as I was ready to ditch now. I didn’t think we’d be able to make it through in this bug either.

  I looked over at Reeves, “Yo Reeves, I’m thinking ditch. What’s your call?”

  Reeves didn’t bother answering. He squealed us through a U-Turn to get away from the outliers of the horde ahead and drove us to where he was guessing was the middle of the two hordes. He slammed on the brakes and we all jumped out. Meetch and Rory came skidding up on their bikes. Rory jumped off his, chains swinging around from his leather jacket. He ripped off his helmet.

  “What the fuck! Get back in that car and drive through the horde!”

  “No. We’re out of here. Radio the rest of your gang and tell them to get back here so we can all grab these weapons and ditch out.” I wrenched the seat up to allow Ann and Thomas to squeeze through. Ginny had already climbed out the other side. Everyone now had weapons.

  Rory’s face was turning crimson with pent up anger. “That’s our shit. Put it back in the car or I’m going to put you all down now.”

  Frank and Twitch pulled up. They jumped off their bikes and ran over to us. Frank yelled out to start grabbing junk out of the car and get in the woods fast. Rory asked where Jorge was.

  “He didn’t make it. These people are right. We can’t get through that horde. Our only chance is the woods. Now, grab some shit and let’s hump it in it the woods. Now!”

  From our positions, we could now see Zombies coming at us from both directions. Rory grabbed an M-16 out of the back seat, slammed in a clip and went and stood in the middle of the road. Shooting one way then turning around to shoot the other before slamming in another clip and continuing. The rest of us dragged what we could out of the car and assisted in taking pot shots at some of the ones getting uncomfortably close.

  The Zombies kept coming. I yelled for everybody to get in the woods. I watched as Ann, Thomas and Ginny turned and started running in that direction. I needed at Reeves and me and him stopped shooting and started jogging towards the woods, weighed down by a very large amount of ammo and weapons we had thrown over our shoulders. Frank and crew continued to blast away behind us. We heard Frank yelling for Rory to get his ass down to the side of the road. Then the sounds of the Zombie screams form hundreds of their throats drowned out any other orders Frank may be yelling.

  We got to the woods where we had watched Ann disappear with Ginny and Thomas and we hit that wood line hard and kept right on going. Trees were down all over the place. Even the woods had gotten all cluttered up by the hurricane. We stumbled over downed trees and branches and got poked by briars before finally busting into a small clearing where the others were waiting for us. Ann gave me a questioning look and I shrugged. I had no idea if Frank and the others were going to make it here or not. Based on the last noises we had heard it sounded like Rory had lost it and was going to die with his finger on the trigger in a pile of the bodies of his enemies and expended brass.

  I figured we could give them a few minutes to show up and if they were still not here we’d shove off and try to work our way north parallel to the road before coming out and trying to find another vehicle to keep going in. A rustling noise in the woods caught our attention and we all waited to see if Rory and team had made it. A little kid, blue tinged face and hands, red eyes staring, came stumbling through the brush, saw us and let out a scream before charging for Ginny. Ann, Reeves, Thomas, Ginny and I all put lead into the kid and what was left of his body skidded to a stop and died.

  The shots echoed through the woods and we heard screams coming at us from all around. Not just from the direction of the road but also from all around us in the woods. I looked around to see if we could climb up in these trees and hang out for a while but I did not see anything that looked easily climbable and there were so many of them around us I did not want to get us stuck in trees with hungry Zombies standing below staring up at us and just waiting for us to fall.

  Entry 34: Running just as fast as we can

  “Ok.” I looked around at the others, formulating the order and making sure I had thought it through in the four seconds I had to make and execute a plan. “Let’s go to hand weapons only and go silent. Let’s head deeper into the woods and try to get around this mob. I few get spilt up let’s try and meet at the ‘Welcome to Georgia’ sign on I-95. Try not to get split up though cause that may be a pain in the ass to hang out by that sign.”

  We all shifted our gear and weapons around on our bodies, getting ready to start hustling through the woods. The brush behind us opened up again and a bloodied Frank stumbled into the clearing. We all relaxed and put our weapons down. I had actually been in the process of squeezing the trigger, he’ll probably never know how close he came to dying from friendly fire.

  “Everybody else is dead. I tried to save them. Rory was a madman. Losing Butch put him over the edge I think. He wouldn’t listen. I got bit I think. I guess we’ll find out if I turn or not. There’s like a million of them chasing me into the woods so I suggest we haul ass.”

  I agreed with that assessment. I pointed into the woods and Reeves jogged out, followed by Ann and Thomas with me and Frank next and Ginny pulling rear guard for now. We all had our hand weapons out to fight with now trying to avoid making any noise that would let the Zombies zero in on our location. My sword also made a convenient way to knock weeds and briars and junk out of the way.

  We stopped for a minute as Thomas sprinted forward to finish off a Zombie Reeves had put on the ground. I turned around to check on Ginny and saw her locked in a fight with a Zombie she was whacking in the head with her bat. The Zombie was ignoring the hits and trying to get at her. I saw Frank go in fast and hard, putting the Zombie down on the ground with its intestines spilling out through a large horizontal cut across its midsection. Two more Zombies broke out of the woods and I attacked one while Ann hit the other one. We were trying to fight and work our way deeper into the woods at the same time.

  I had put Ginny in the rear position not realizing it would be some susceptible to attack. Id’ just wanted a pair of sharp eyes and wits back there. Seeing the volume of attacks to our rear was increasing I switched places with her. Frank joined me on rear guard. I asked him where he learned how to use a knife like that. He had been to knife fighting school when he was in scout sniper school in the marines it turned out.

  I knew my dad had been to that school. He had told the story about a million times of hitting New Orleans the Friday night the training was over with some of the guys he had gone through the training with. They had run out of money and been starting the long walk back to the barracks when a young man had jumped out of an alley and attempted to hold them up. With a knife. The only real fight that then ensued was the inebriated jarheads arguing with each other over how got to take the kid out. They finally took turns. Giving the kid back the knife after each of them took a turn bashing the kid to the ground. When they got bored with that they took the would-be muggers wallet and knife and headed back to the bars to continue drinking courtesy of the ineffectual New Orleans criminal.

  I smiled at the thought of making it to Tennessee and introducing my slightly homophobic, very semper fi, father to Frank. Frank asked why I was smiling. I told him not to die on us or turn into a Zombie because I really needed him to make it to Tennessee with me so I could introduce him to my dad as the Gay Marine leader of a Gay Gang called the Pink Angels.

  “Sounds good to me.” Frank said, “Especially the part about me not dying until we get there.”

  Frank did not look so great, he had blood running down into his eyes form
a gash on his forehead. His left arm was all fucked up form teeth marks and claw marks it looked like. He saw me looking and said he had been using that arm to try and hold Zombies off him and Meetch. Firing away with the other hand. I reached around in my pockets until I found the Ziploc bag in my pants pocket with my pill collection in it. I spilled out a handful of them and handed them over to Frank. He looked at them, then looked at me.

  “Pain pills, antibiotics, I basically just take a handful of that crap every morning and night at this point. We’ll get you your very own mix as soon as we can. It’s like trail mix for the convalescent.”

  We continued jogging into the woods. There were still screams all around us but they were growing fainter. We ran until we hit the side of a lake. Then we turned to head North and commenced trudging forward. It made life easier to only have to look in one direction for attackers. Unless Zombies on jet skis were after us we should be pretty safe from attack on the right.

  We walked until night fell then we all lay down on the ground and tried to get some sleep. I took the first watch, doing my best to ignore the sobs coming from Frank as he worked to fall asleep. Ann went and sat with him for a little bit, she wasn’t as knowledgeable of the fact that men liked to be left alone to wallow in their sorrow and guilt versus talking about it and wearing it on their sleeves like women. She seemed to fix him, the sobs diminished after reaching a fever pitch and were soon replaced by snores. Not sure if she used words or valium but either way I was super thankful. She came by, gave me a kiss and headed to her tree bed.

  Entry 35: Thank You for Visiting

  We walked in the woods for two days before running into a small road. We found a small farmhouse on the road with a pickup truck and inside the farmhouse we found the keys to the truck. We also found water, food and a zombie in overalls. The Zombie in overalls almost took out Ginny when she opened a closet that the Zombie popped out of with no warning. No telling how long the Zombie had been in there, quietly waiting for the opportunity to pop out and try to take a bite out of someone.

  The guy had a gas oven that still worked. Frank knew how to make coffee using the kettle percolator thing. He must have been to cowboy school or something, regardless, the brewing coffee smelled delicious. It was probably stale and all of that but we could care less. Did I mention how wonderful it smelled!

  Once the coffee was ready, we all sat around the table and ate some cooked beans and corn and other junk we had found in the cupboard recently vacated by the killer farmer Zombie. The coffee was definitely the highlight. We got into our favorite conversation while sitting here. How do you think this all started?

  Frank spoke up, “My theory would be North Korea did it. You think about it and this seems like a disease manufactured for war. Highly contagious, causes the population to hunt each other down and kill each other without being able to use machinery, and then burns itself out. All the distributor of this disease had to do is unleash the virus, hide their population underground for six months, then come out and take over the world. I figure no other country really has a good reason to deploy this. North Korea has been investing like crazy in Nukes so you got to assume they’ve been spending money on bio weapons as well. They’re getting squeezed by China, Japan, South Korea, the US. They had to do something or they were going to cease existing as a country.”

  It made sense to the rest of us. It kind of jived with the idea Reeves had thrown out earlier too. We just hadn’t mapped it down to a specific country. Frank was definitely bringing an old warriors perspective to the equation.

  “Great theory on world domination and such but for the moment are main issue is how do we get from this farmhouse to Tennessee. I don’t see how a country halfway around the globe really has anything to do with our situation. I say we load up the truck and get moving north again.” Reeves finished up his little pep talk by shoving another big spoonful of beans down his throat and taking a big sip of the steaming hot coffee.

  We all agreed with the sentiment. However, beat to crap from spending a night in a men’s room with no doors during a hurricane and the majority of the last two days fleeing for our lives through the woods we decided to spend a couple of days relaxing.

  Ann made her nurse rounds. My eye was looking better according to her. With nothing covering it I was not able to open the eyelid without her help. With it open and the other eye closed all I could see were vague lights. She freshened up the bandages and gave me more medicine to take then continued her rounds. She announced that Frank was looking good. At his insistence, we had him tied to a bed when we weren’t standing guard over him. Thomas was still looking good. Nothing had gotten infected. Probably due to Ann dumping disinfectant all over us every chance she got and pumping us full of antibiotics. Everyone else was doing about the same.

  After her rounds Ann came back and crawled into the farmer’s bed with me and snuggled up to me. I thought about making a move but it turned out the move would have to wait since we were both asleep within about a minute of her laying in the bed with me. Best sleep ever!

  We stayed there for three days until we started running low on food. We loaded up the farmer’s truck with what was left and all the blankets, clothes and rope we could find then headed down the road until we got to a bigger road. We had to go around some cars and one tractor parked in the road but otherwise fairly uneventful. As we were driving I did see a small group of Zombies gathered around a dead deer on the side of the road. They looked up and gave chase as we passed. I could see they had been eating the deer.

  We made it to I-95 and headed North once again. This part of the state was fairly desolate which made the going pretty easy. I knew we’d be coming up on a bridge pretty soon that would take us over a river and into Georgia. Then we just needed to look for highway 26 (or possibly 24?) and go West for a while. We saw the sign for thank you for visiting Florida and I snorted to myself. It had only taken me about six months to make this normally six-hour drive.

  Reeves was edging us along the bridge, avoiding wrecks as he drove. Thomas started banging on the window divider and when I popped it open he yelled he heard something. I had Reeves stop the truck and we all sat there listening.

  “Everybody under the truck!” I yelled once I had figured out the noise. Reeves had beat me to the noise but was giving me a funny look at the order.

  “You sure boss?” I nodded and he turned the engine off and we all jumped out and slid under the truck. Pretty soon we were all easily able to make out the whoop-whoop-whoop noise of an approaching helicopter. As it flew over I stuck my head out just a little bit to try and see it.

  The helicopter flying over had the unmistakable symbol of North Korea painted on the fuselage.

  Table of Contents

  Entry 1: Where am I

  Entry 2: Rollin’

  Entry 3: That answers that

  Entry 4: Bea’trayal

  Entry 5: Prison Break

  Entry 6: Hearse ho!

  Entry 7: Rendezvous

  Entry 8: Sardines

  Entry 9: Baby blue

  Entry 10: Gator bait

  Entry 11: Adrift

  Entry 12: I’m on a boat!

  Entry 13: Margaritaville

  Entry 14: Floaters

  Entry 15: Hells Jetty

  Entry 16: Sinking

  Entry 17: Still Sinking…

  Entry 18: Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay

  Entry 19: 90210

  Entry 20: A walk on thin air

  Entry 21: The Thunder Rolled

  Entry 22: Feet on Dry land

  Entry 23: Talk like a Pirate Day

  Entry 24: Sleepyhead

  Entry 25: Movement is Life

  Entry 26: Out of the Frying pan…

  Entry 27: Dain Bramaged

  Entry 28: Don’t worry. Be happy!

  Entry 29: Adrift

  Entry 30: I am Ironman

  Entry 31: Fresh underwear

  Entry 32: Hurricane Ann

  Entry 33: T
he Pink Angels

  Entry 34: Running just as fast as we can

  Entry 35: Thank You for Visiting