Zournal (Book 5): Feeling Lucky?

by Merritt, R. S.

  The truck was moving slowly in front of us. There were Zombies crawling all over it. If they managed to get on the roof and start dropping down through the hole in the roof of the trailer the girls were not going to be in a good situation. They did have at least ten of them in there who were now armed so they wouldn’t be completely helpless but who wants to be locked in a trailer while Zombies are dropping down through the roof?

  We had a bigger problem looming. We were driving slowly behind the truck and at this speed the Zombies were starting to crawl all over us. Instead of letting them cover us like ants on a sugar cube I hit the accelerator and spun us off the road. We chugged through a shallow ditch into the field that the road ran through. It was still covered in shrubs and undergrowth but that didn’t cause a huge challenge for the Hummer.

  The challenge looked like it may be the hundreds of Zombies who were popping up all around us who had been sleeping in the underbrush and not bothered to get up when we blew up the water tower. I started trying to slalom us through the masses of Zombies popping up. It was kind of working in a we’ll die in five minutes versus right now kind of way. Ann smacked me on the shoulder and pointed out her window. Because I had plenty of spare time to be looking around.

  The tractor trailer hauling the girls and the nukes was trying to maneuver past the Zombies streaming back towards it. As we watched the whole rig jackknifed and fell off the road into the ditch. It had hit hard enough so the trailer ended up upside down and the cab part ended up on its side. I jerked the wheel to send us in that direction to try and see if we could help.

  We couldn’t. We couldn’t even see the cab as it was covered in multiple layers of Zombies. I said a quick prayer in my head, trying to remember who had been driving the big rig. The trailer itself was upside down. We were getting swarmed and they were coming at us thick from down the road. The radio came on and Wilsons voice came over it.

  “Everyone return to base. Return to the hangar. Go now.”

  That sounded like a great plan if any of us could get there. Ginny reminded us from the back seat that we had left the hangar doors open so it was probably filled with Zombies by now. The radio barked back to life.

  “This is Catori. I’m in the cab with Sean. The windows are cracking and bowing. My legs broke and Sean isn’t talking or moving over on his side. Please save my sister.”

  I got on the radio. We’d been trying to maintain radio silence since every item we talked don unencrypted channels we seemed to get caught. Even the encrypted ones were circumspect these days. The Seals seemed to get all the best toys though.

  Catori was dead. We all knew that and it sounded like he accepted it. There was probably a hundred Zombies on every side of that cab by now and no way for us to get to him and he was letting us know he couldn’t get out either. I thumbed the talk button on the radio. Broadcasting out to everyone on the team.

  “Hey man. If she’s alive I’ll die before I let her die. I swear that man. We’ll get her out. I love you bro.”

  Wilson and the others echoed the statement. We were all driving through the fields trying to get back on the road to head towards the hangars. I heard some muffled booms and Ann let me know it looked like the Zombies had gotten in the cab and Catori had let go of a couple of frag grenades to welcome them in. That’s the way a warrior goes out.

  Ginny was getting out of the way so Ann could get in the backseat and go up in the turret. Daisy was trying to sleep and looking kind of pissed off every time we hit a bump. We’d got her to stop barking every time she saw a Zombie by whacking her on the nose every time. She still let out a growl but she didn’t get too carried away. Otherwise, we’d have been dead meat the first time we tried sneaking past a pile of the sleeping in the street.

  Ginny yelled that the back of the truck was still shut. Since it was completely upside down the hole should be covered up as well. It was in a ditch so hopefully the part of the trailer with the hole had landed right to keep it covered. They’d had a bunch of blankets and stuff in there with them which should have helped with flipping around in a trailer with fifty other people plus a forklift, weapons, and a couple of large nuclear bombs in lead trunks weighing hundreds of pounds each.

  I focused on trying to get jus back into the hangar. If we could regroup we could figure out how to save Catori’s sister and everyone else in the back of the truck. I fully planned on keeping my promise to him and I knew Ann and Ginny wouldn’t let me skip out on it even if I wanted to. Since we’d been the last out of the hangar we had the privilege of being the first back in. We’d also missed the brunt of the Zombie mass attacking.

  I pulled us into the dark hangar with a string of Zombies running in after us. Ann was feverishly getting the fifty prepped to fire. I flipped on the high beams to blind the Zombies and show us what we were dealing with. I almost flipped them right back off. I saw another Hummer coming in our direction but it looked like it was being carried on the backs of hundreds of Zombies. All of whom were making a bee line for us.

  Ann started shooting. She couldn’t just shoot into the crowd of oncoming Zombies since she’d be risking shooting up the Hummer coming in. She was picking her targets based on angels where she could blast away and not have to worry about hitting the Hummer while still getting a lot of lead into a lot of Zombies. I jumped out and grabbed the M-16 Ginny passed me and started shooting the ones coming right at us. I figured if I missed and hit the Hummer coming in that a round from the M-16 was far less likely to do any damage than a round from the big gun Ann was chugging away on.

  The air was full of gunpowder and the screams of the damned as they ran for us. I couldn’t hear for shit. I was so going to apply for disability if we made it through this crap alive. Looking out I saw the headlights of the Hummer coming in get turned sideways then flip all the way over as the army of Zombies pressing against it caused it to roll. There was once again nothing we could do to help. A few minutes later that Hummer went up in flames as whoever was in it setoff grenades to kill Zombies and keep from being eaten alive.

  The massive explosions attracted a lot of attention and took some of the Zombie rush off us. We still had more than we could deal with though. Another gun joined the fight over to my right and I glanced over, expecting to see Ginny trying to shoot an AK-47 with one hand. It was Reeves!

  Him and Wilson and another Seal had formed a line and were walking towards the hangar door blasting away. It looked like they were going to make it when the Zombies decided to randomly switch their attention from the exploding Hummer in front of the hangar to the really bright lights coming out of the hangar. The forward momentum Reeves and Wilson had faltered and they started falling back as hundreds of Zombies surged towards our location. I thought about trying to get down into the secret base but by the time we got coordinated and did the codes and everything we’d probably have been eaten already.

  Plus, I wasn’t sure if there were any supplies down there and we’d be literally burying ourselves alive. We weren’t going to hold here. Reeves was spinning his finger around in the air and yelling something at us. I struggled with what we should do. Reeves turned around and yelled at us again and pointed towards the back of the hangar. I thought I got what he meant. I yanked the back-door open and grabbed Daisy by the collar while yelling at Ann to use up all her ammo and dismount. She totally wasn’t paying any attention to me at all. Ginny crawled up beside her and told her what was up.

  I was busy grabbing every bit of ammo I could find in the Hummer and stuffing it into my pockets and bug out bag. The gun up top went silent and Ann came sliding down the side of the Hummer. We all turned around and hauled ass for the back door to the hangar. A couple of explosions behind us were courtesy of Wilson and some grenades he had on him. We sprinted. Slamming into the back door I yanked it open and a Zombie jumped on me.

  The Zombie was a fat older guy with rancid breath. I hit the ground flat on my back with the back pack I had on jamming painfully into my spine. I heard Daisy bar
k and she hit the Zombie in the neck hard enough to move him off me a little. I shoved him the rest of the way off. His mouth dripped warm saliva all over my face as he gnashed his teeth together trying to get at me. Someone shot him in the head as soon as he was off me and the side of my face got splattered with blood and brains.

  I struggled to get up as another Zombie started coming through the door and tried to grab me. The same person who had just shot the Zombie who put me on the ground put a gun on that one’s head and blew it away. I turned and looked and Ann smiled and winked at me. I looked down at Daisy and she was busy trying not to bark. I felt like she’d earned the right by saving my life again but consistency is important in training a dog. I made a mental note to give her a snausage if I could find a bag of them. The back door wasn’t working for us.

  Wilson pressed in beside me and went full auto. He cleared out some Zombies but a bunch more filled in that space. Reeves and Ginny and the other Seal were holding the line behind us but that wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. The stairs up into the cat walk were about twenty feet to our left. We’d be trapped up there and probably die once we ran out of ammo but if we stayed down here we were going to be dead before we even ran out of ammo.

  No way anyone would hear me if I tried yelling out my idea so I just made a run for the stairs and hoped they’d follow me. They did. I gave Ginny the leash and sent her and Daisy running up the metal staircase. Ann and Reeves were next. Wilson and the Seal I recognized now as Petty Officer Walker stopped and held the bottom of the stair case with me. We ran out of ammo at almost the same time and we all turned and started running up the stairs. We made it around two flights and Wilson spun around with his pistol and fired off some shots into the Zombies coming up after us.

  At the next fight, I took my turn with the shooting. The only thing keeping us from being overrun was the Zombies tripping over the bodies of the Zombies we were killing. Walker took his turn on the next flight. Up at the top of the stairs there was a cat walk that went about halfway around the hangar in a bug square and there was a moving crane that went down the middle. We were way over a hundred feet up in the air. This was a big hangar. We started running down the catwalk and then I saw Ginny start balance beaming her way across the beam that the pulley system worked on.

  Looking over to the other side of the hangar I saw motion over there as Zombies started climbing the other set of stairs to come up. Hoping Ginny might have a plan we all started working our way across until we got to the pulley system in the middle. It was big enough where we could all sit uncomfortably and stare at the huge mess we’d gotten ourselves into. I had needed up being the lucky one to get to hold Daisy who was completely freaked out by heights. The pulley system actually rode the I-beams underneath. We were on some kind of crow’s nest where the I-Beam widened out with about a two-foot gap in between the girders.

  In the reflected light of the high beams, we sat and watched as the complete catwalk filled up with Zombies and the entire floor of the hangar was covered in howling Zombies. Reeves and I took one side and Wilson and Walker took the other to knock the Zombies off who kept trying to come across the narrow beam leading out to the pulley system. Most of them were way overexcited and fell off before they got too far but the ones who made it almost all the way to us we had to shoot before they were able to get us.

  We didn’t have the ammo for this. We didn’t have the time for this. I needed to see if Ann had anything left in that magic Pez Dispenser of hers because this whole situation was making me a glass half empty kind of guy.

  Entry 43: Not Dead Yet

  Stuck a hundred feet in the air with two narrow beams leading out to us. Zombies constantly coming down both of those beams trying to get at us. Starting to get pretty low on ammunition and thinking about the best weapon to use to knock the Zombies off the beam once we ran out. The floor of the hangar was covered in Zombies. The people we rescued and two nuclear bombs we needed to move were outside in the middle of a mass of Zombies in an upside-down trailer.

  We tried to talk but we were split apart by the need to kill the Zombies coming at us from both directions. I’d hoped Ginny had a plan when she led us out here but one look at her face had told me she knew we were screwed. I racked my brain trying to come up with an idea to get us out of this. The insane amount of screaming from the mass of Zombies in the hangar was driving me crazy.

  The guys who had gone out to blow up the water tower!

  I signaled for Ann to come take my place with Reeves keeping the Zombies off us from this side and made my way over to Wilson. He saw me coming over and patted me on the back. Leaning forward he spoke directly into my ear so I could hear.

  “Hey man. I’ve got Johnston and Mertel on comms. We’re trying to figure out a way to un-fuck this situation. Any ideas you guys have? Feed them to me. We’ll get out of here though. One step at a time we’ll beat our way to the finish line man!”

  “What do they have left? Any explosives?”

  I must have gotten carried away yelling in his ear as he moved back from me and made a show of rubbing his ear while Walker kept up the pace of shooting the Zombies off the beam as they came across at us. Wilson leaned back towards me.

  “Nope. They used it all blowing up the water tower. They basically have their weapons and that’s about it. They’re pretty far out too. I thought I wasn’t going to get ahold of them but they worked their way back in range. They confirmed it doesn’t look like anyone survived in any of the other vehicles.”

  “Alright. Let me go talk to Ginny and Ann and Reeves. Maybe one of them will have an idea. Ginny is pretty good at this. We’ve been in tight spots before but this one’s pretty crazy.”

  I crawled back over and let everyone know what was going on. I sucked at my volume control and everyone gave me a pissed off look after I yelled in their ears. No one had any ideas quite yet but all agreed to try and noodle up something to save our asses. It’s not like we had a lot of other things to do up there. I was thinking maybe those Seals could go get a bunch of gas and troch all the Zombies? Problem being it would more than likely torch us to as heat rises. There was more Zombies than we had bullets so the cavalry couldn’t just come in shooting. I started thinking along the lines of telling the two guys outside to focus on rescuing the girls in the trailer because I had no idea how they were going to be able to do anything with us.

  Ginny crawled over to me. I leaned forward to hear what she had to say. She repeated the plan that had saved us a ton of times already. Maybe it would work this time too. Ann was nodding at me that she agreed with the plan. I sent Ginny to talk to Reeves and I headed over for Walker to see if his guys would be able to pull it off.

  Really trying to control my volume this time.

  “Hey. If we go quiet and turn all our lights off a lot of the Zombies should go to sleep. Then we just have to lower ourselves down and slip out before they wake up. But we need to go quiet now to give them time to settle down. Do you think you could shoot out the headlights?”

  Wilson nodded and started talking into a little mic on his neck. Walker stopped shooting and pulled out an asp that he extended and started using to push the Zombies off the beam. It was a lot riskier as each Zombie tried to grab him and the asp when he used it. I knew Reeves would be switching to the baseball bat. We were all about done on ammunition anyway so this wasn’t a big deal to go ahead and switch to hand weapons now.

  Wilson lay down and poked his AR-15 barrel down through the pieces of the pulley and knocked out the headlights with three quick shots. I made a mental note to give him shit about it taking three shots for him to kill two headlights. If we made it out of here there was no way I could just let that lie.

  We all went silent. It was now pitch black up on the beams. We heard Zombies slamming into the ground below. They weren’t having much luck running across the beam in the dark. They didn’t scream as they fell which was eerie. All we heard were the thuds as their bodies hit the hangar floors. Hopefu
lly, they took out a few more Zombies when they landed. Now all we had to do was be patient for a little bit then try to quietly get all of us down to the hangar floor somehow then out of the building without getting torn apart.

  Ann pressed something into my hands and whispered in my ear to put them on and take a look around. I figured out she had handed me some night vision goggles. I put the whole contraption over my head and took a look around. I could now see the Zombies who were still trying to walk out on the beam. The number of them had gone way down since the lights went off and it got quiet up there. The ones still coming this way must be doing so based on some vague memory of something being out here. I watched as young girl climbed though the railings about five feet from the beam and fell towards the ground.

  I moved my head to look down at the floor. It was still covered in Zombies from what I could tell in the monochrome space landing goggle view I had. I started wondering if we could use the pulley system to lower ourselves down. I watched as the Zombies slowly started breaking up and moving into their preferred sleeping piles. I had the goggles on for about five minutes when Ann nudged me and whispered the Wilson was looking to get his goggles back so I took a last look and handed them back down the line. I assumed everyone had gotten a chance to take a look.