Zournal (Book 5): Feeling Lucky?

by Merritt, R. S.

  I wondered what kind of weird driving technique Ann was going to pull to get us on the on ramp without smashing into the concrete guard rails. The weird driving technique turned out to be, without slowing down, she waited until the timing in her head said to do it and she spun the wheel hard to the right. The ass end of our Hummer moved to lead the charge towards the ramp as we went into a spin. It felt like we were going to flip at any second. A strong aroma filled the Hummer and there was no way of knowing if it was Daisy or someone else. Poor Daisy would obviously end up taking the blame regardless.

  The back of the Hummer spun in a full three sixty and then went back to where it was supposed to be before starting to rotate again. I hadn’t noticed before but we were actually proceeding towards the on ramp. Ann evidently knew some physics or had dated a stunt car driver or something because we might actually make it. We slammed into the guard rail. Hard.

  Ann never took her foot off the pedal. The side of her head was damp with blood from where she had slammed into her window with her head when we hit the rail. She still wrestled the wheel steady and kept us moving forward. Another rocket exploded behind us and the back of the Hummer seemed to lift up as a wave of junk from the road was blown all over the back of the Hummer. We shot out of the plume of dust like a surfer coming out of the tube of a monster wave.

  We caught air at the top of the ramp and kept right on going. Ann looked over at me. That is when I noticed the blood making her hair all mat together on the side of her head and saw it trickling down onto her clothes and face and neck.

  “You ok?” I asked her. “Feeling dizzy or need to swap out the driver spot or anything?”

  “Merely a flesh wound.” She came back with her best Monty Python impression. Given the circumstances I admired her for trying to introduce some levity but her delivery was pretty horrible. I threw her a courtesy laugh, Reeves groaned, and Ginny just looked like she was going to ask what the hell Ann was talking about. I decided to steer the conversation a different direction before we went off on a tangent explaining Monty Python when we probably should be talking about the people trying to catch us and kill us.

  “So. How about those Koreans? I’m thinking they’re going to be up our butts here shortly. Ideas?”

  Reeves and Ginny both started talking at the same time. I was trying to understand them when we suddenly veered to the right and started slowing down. Reeves and Ginny had stopped talking and where screaming at me to grab the wheel. I looked over and Ann had decided to take a nap while driving us at a high rate of speed. She was out. Mouth wide open and eyes closed with her head back against the headrest. So much for it just being a flesh wound. I reached over and grabbed the wheel and tried to keep us from running into anything while trying to work out how to get over the hump in the middle so I could stop the Hummer and take Ann’s seat.

  Considering Ann had just gone unconscious on us after whacking the crap out of her head I didn’t want to move her around too much. If I didn’t do something pretty quick though the Koreans were going to catch us. If they caught us we were all dead anyway. With that cheerful thought in mind I reached over and started man handling Ann over the hump in the middle. She woke up when I had got her about a tenth of the way over. She pulled free from me. Slammed on the brakes. Got out of the Hummer and collapsed on the ground.

  I ran around and picked her up. Reeves and Ginny helped me get her in the backseat where Ginny started working on her. Daisy was licking the blood off her head which I decided to think of as useful versus being super gross. I got the Hummer moving again with Reeves up in the turret facing backwards with the big gun cocked and ready to rock. He might not be able to hit anything but then again, he might. Either way, it was going to make the gunner in the Hummer chasing us a lot less accurate when he had some dude shooting back at him.

  Speaking of the Hummer chasing us. I caught a glimpse of them in the rearview coming around the curve we had just left. Reeves must have seen them at the same time as he sent a stream of lead in their direction. The pursuing Hummer spun out and stopped in the breakdown lane in a big cloud of dust. I kept our Hummer moving at top speed while trying to swerve around erratically to help avoid us being blown up. Something behind us did explode but it didn’t impact us so I chalked that up as a win.

  I was trying to focus on driving, watch for the enemy, and see how Ann was doing all at the same time. Ginny told me Ann seemed fine. She was just passed out and with a bruise starting to cover pretty much the whole left side of her face. She had stopped Daisy from licking the blood coating Ann’s hair and gone with the sterile wipes instead. I assumed she also thought the job Daisy had been doing was gross.

  Reeves was still sending single shots back in the general direction of where we had left the enemy. I assumed they were waiting for orders and would be back on our asses fairly soon. There was an exit coming up for a county road that we could try and take. The problem was everything out here was pretty flat and dusty and straight. Getting off the highway didn’t guarantee they wouldn’t be able to see us if they drove by even if we managed to get a few miles down the road by the time they got up here.

  “Wonder if they have helicopters or any kind of air support?”

  I chose to ignore ‘the glass is half empty’ Reeves and his random question around air support or not. I figured if they had air support we’d probably already be dead so they must not have it. Unless it just hadn’t made it here yet. Damnit Reeves.

  I had skipped one exit already since it didn’t look to offer much in the way of cover. I did see some decent sized buildings off to the side of the highway now that were hidden by a forest of scrawny bushes. I slowed down to a sedate cruise and pulled off the highway. Careful to try and avoid leaving any marks or anything in the partially sand covered concrete. I pulled forward about a hundred meters then yelled for Reeves to stay on the gun. I got out and ran over to the side of the road and ripped a branch off one of the trees. Then I ran back to the intersection and made sure any tracks were wiped clean all the way back to where we were now. The tracks were minor and probably not something anyone would even notice so I was feeling decent about our chances.

  I headed up the county road for about a mile. Seeing large homesteads in the brush all around us. I wanted something big enough for us to hide out in for a while. We needed to be able to hide the Hummer in it too. We needed to find something within the next five minutes to avoid the air cover I assumed was on the way to search for us. I saw a large looking home on the right and pulled off at the next cross street. We drove down until we found the driveway and pulled in. The place had a detached covered parking area with room for two RVs in it. Perfect.

  We drove the Hummer in under the cover next to the single RV that was currently parked in the giant car port. I turned the engine off and we all strained our ears listening for a few minutes. Not hearing anything we decided to try and make the trip to the main house so we could work on making Ann more comfortable. We all got out and started pulling Ann out of the car. I ended up putting her carefully up on my back into a modified fireman’s carry to get her to the front door of the house. We all approached the home in a much more haphazard manner than we typically would have.

  Reeves went up the stairs and was fixing to tap on the door to check for Zombies when the door flew open and a Zombie threw itself on Reeves. Another one came out and went for Ginny. I squatted down low to try and avoid hurting Ann as much as possible and dropped her to the ground. I pulled out the two machetes I had stuck in my belt and sank one into the back of the head of the tall bluish black Zombie who had been trying to claw out Ginny’s face. I turned to help Reeves with the Zombie he was rolling around on the ground with and three more Zombies came charging out of the house.

  One of them angled towards Ann who was laying defenseless on the ground. The other two were moving towards Reeves to get tagged in on the wrestling match he was currently in. This situation was rapidly deteriorating. I yelled “guns” while dropping th
e machete I had left in my hand and fumbling around for my Smith and Wesson nine millimeter. Before I could even draw my weapon, Ginny had shot the one running at Ann as it slid on its knees stretching out its gnarled hands to get at her exposed flesh.

  I ran over to where Reeves was buried under a pile of Zombies and started carefully shooting the parts that stuck out of the pile and did not look like they belonged to Reeves. Ginny joined me with a hatchet and started hacking away at the ones who refused to let go of Reeves. The original one who had jumped him was dead courtesy of Reeves shoving a knife into the Zombies heart while they had been wrestling around. We butchered our way through the other two and pulled Reeves out from underneath the pile of bloody body parts.

  Reeves was bleeding from bites and scratches but seemed more or less intact. We picked up Ann and went into the house. Behind us, we could hear screams as Zombies in the area who had heard the gunshots started making their way over.

  Entry 4: Remember the Alamo

  We were screwed. The idea had been to sneak into a house and hide until the Koreans went away. We’d hid the Hummer in the RV parking area so helicopters would not see it but I was pretty sure they’d notice if one of the houses happened to have a few hundred Zombies trying to beat their way into it. I ran to the window to look out into the yard. Maybe we still had time to get back in the Hummer and go find somewhere else to hide.

  Looking out the window I saw the first dozen or so Zombies had already drifted in. They were making a bee line for the house. Still, a dozen was doable. The noise from outside seemed to indicate there were a lot more out there than that though. There was already pounding coming from the back of the house. Probably a couple of the Zombies trying to beat their way in through a sliding glass door.

  This was not good. I looked over at Ginny. She pointed at the curving staircase heading up into the second floor. I hated getting stuck on the second floor and hated the thought of ceding the battle for the first floor already. Ginny typically had a good sense of tactics though. I started to throw Ann back over my shoulder and she went from dead weight to a twisting lioness right as I started swinging her. Totally bad timing on regaining consciousness and freaking out on me. I was going to have to run up some serious debt at the chiropractor’s office if we lived through the next hour.

  I sat Ann down. She’d stopped freaking out once she realized it was me throwing her around. She apologized to me and then stood on her own. She was wobbling as she tried to stand and get her balance but otherwise looked about as healthy as we ever looked these days. Daisy had done a good job licking the blood off her face at least. Daisy was currently running around the living room barking at the banging on the doors that was increasing in pitch. We really needed to stop at a pet store and get the loud mouth a muzzle.

  We heard glass breaking and the moans from outside were getting louder. Ginny gave me a look and I wrapped my arm around Ann to help her and we all hobbled up the stairs. We all hobbled except for Daisy who sprinted up them and disappeared into the loft area before the rest of us were even halfway up. Ginny had the lead. I had Ann and was in the middle while Reeves was walking up the stairs backward behind us with a low caliber pistol in one hand and a framing hammer in the other. The framing hammer was pretty bad ass and made a great Zombie killer.

  We were going to be low on ammo real fast if it come to a firefight. We hadn’t had time to get most of our stuff out of the Hummer so we just had what we had strapped to us. Granted, we all walked around most of the time now with small arsenals strapped on at all times. I still would have felt better if we had been able to snag a couple boxes of ammo out of the Hummer. It was going to suck to go all last stand up in here and run out of ammo in a few minutes when we had a whole stockpile of it in the Hummer less than a hundred yards away from us. It might as well be on the moon for now as much good as it was going to do us.

  I saw Ginny disappear up the stairs into the loft and I knew what she would be looking for. A room we could hide out in and hope the Zombies didn’t figure out we were in there. If that worked we would just have to wait them out. She’d try to find a room with a window or some other way out that faced where we had the Hummer parked as well. That way when we did decide to make a run for it we’d be able to check out what we were going to have to deal with before taking the plunge.

  A room with a pantry or fridge in it would be awesome since among the other things we didn’t bring in were the large packs of bottled waters we had in the Hummer. If there were a sink or a bathtub we could try and see if there was any water pressure still in the pipes. Sometimes we were able to get that to work and then sometimes the water wasn’t gross that we ended up with. We’d just have to see. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had to resort to toilet water either. I just hoped they didn’t have those stupid little blue toilet bowl cleaners in this house. That blue stuff tasted like robot piss.

  I drug Ann up to the top flight of stairs and into the loft. Behind me I heard Reeves take a couple of shots as the volume of the screaming from the incoming Zombies started getting louder. I was getting déjà vu of the recent stop we’d made at the bottling plant where we’d been chased and cornered upstairs. Only then we had at least been able to come up with some explosives to help us get out. As it was, I was thinking this time may be more of a toe to toe death match to get out of this mess. Did we have enough rounds and stamina to take down all the Zombies before they were able to kill us? Probably not. The main problem with fighting Zombies is there was so damn many of them.

  Another option we’d talked about was going all Spartan on them. If you’ve seen the movie ‘300’ or read the history of the Battle of Thermopylae you probably have an idea of where I’m going with that. The Spartans had faced off against an enemy that outnumbered them a hundred to one. They’d done it in a narrow corridor along the coast known as the hot gates. Buy constricting how the enemy was able to come at them they made it less a game of numbers and more a game of skill. From a skill perspective, a single Spartan was more than a match in hand to hand combat for any of the enemy.

  If we could find a place to make a stand upstairs that was narrow enough we could conceivably do the same thing as the Spartans. Funnel the Zombies into a killing field and take them out in a way that their numbers were not such an advantage. Of course, even with the Spartans the numbers had won out in the end so we’d just have to hope there was a limited number of Zombies headed this way. A hundred of them may be possible if we hit them just right but many more than that and there was no way we survived this. Even a hundred was probably really pushing it.

  We’d been on the run now for almost two years. Living in in constant fear in a world turned upside down by the virus and the invasion. What kind of life where we living when a trip to the restroom to take a dump was a life-threatening venture? Ann was currently still wobbling a bit from the strike to the side of her head. Par for the course in our group were injuries were common place and we were all now covered in scar tissue. I wasn’t sure I even had any visible skin left that wasn’t covered in scar tissue. We were tired and beat down and really didn’t need to be in this situation right now but we hadn’t survived this long by being whiny bitches.

  Except maybe for Reeves. He did make up for it with some pretty serious fighting and survival skills though. Behind me I heard Reeves yell that he was popping smoke downstairs. He had a theory around blinding the Zombies with smoke to make it harder for them to attack. My theory around that was that Zombies were kind of like those Roomba vacuum cleaner robots. The ones that were supposed to have all kinds of room mapping capabilities built into them. If you sat there and watched a Roomba for like ten minutes you figured out all that stuff was bullshit. Those things just drive around in circles bumping into stuff and randomly sucking up dirt. That randomness works to eventually cover the whole floor after a few days and cycles though.

  I figured the Zombie psyche worked very similarly. They stumbled around in circles and joined up when they ran int
o others of their kind as they assumed maybe the other ones knew where some food was. They did not have any finely attuned psychic sense or any of that garbage. They had luck and time and perseverance. Those three things were enough to have allowed them to wipe out most of the regular humans on the planet. Anyway, I figured the smoke grenades Reeves was tossing would probably just make it harder for us to figure out what was going on than it would hurt the Zombies. I couldn’t think of any great reasons to tell Reeves not to do it though so why not. Then I did.

  “Yo Reeves!” I yelled to him as Ann and I looked around in the loft with the smoke staring to drift up the stairs and make this whole situation even creepier. “Chill with the smoke. If it gets out of the house it’ll be a marker for the Koreans to find us. You know, in case they miss the house that is surrounded by hundreds of Zombies screaming.”

  I left off the caveat that it probably didn’t matter anyway since we had minimal chance of making it out of this one alive. Minimal chance is way better than having zero chance though. Reeves made it up into the loft with us. I was looking around trying to figure out where Ginny and Daisy had disappeared to. Ann had decided this was a good time to take a seat on the coffee table they had up here. Reeves got himself setup at the top of the stairs while I looked around for Ginny and Daisy some more.