Feeling Lucky?

by R. S. Merritt

  We were taking two trucks to allow for redundancy. If one truck broke down or got shot up we’d have a spare everyone could pile into. We filled the back of the trucks up with jugs of fuel but I wasn’t real sure how useful that would be since we weren’t planning on carrying it all the way to Vegas on foot. We went around and swept up our footprints and tried to get rid of any trace of our having been here. We had already thrown all the dead Zombies into one of the large warehouse spaces. If we managed to somehow survive this ordeal and make it back here with at least one breathing pilot we may actually be able to fly the friendly skies again.

  I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for us ever actually seeing this building again. You never knew though. We waited until about an hour before dusk got serious about dimming the sun and headed out. We followed some dirt roads through the desolation that was the cracked and patched earth surrounding Las Vegas. Ann, Catori and I were in the lead vehicle with Reeves, Daisy, Marg and Ginny following behind us. We bumped and jarred our way into the night with Catori staring at a map and the odometer and making random guesses as to where we were. I personally had no clue once it got dark. I just knew if we headed towards that glow on the horizon we’d get there eventually.

  We were basically just driving until we started hitting mountains then turning right until we started running into houses. Once we were in the house area we were going to stop and setup somewhere to spend the day. The next time we moved would be the following evening. This should help us avoid Zombies and the Koreans. It was going to make the expedition take a lot longer though. Marg wanted to press on and see how far into the suburbs we could get before the sun came up. He bowed towards our experience though. Us being alive definitely counted for a lot out here. I guess we’d all gotten so used to living constantly with the mind-numbing terror of the Zombies that it was second nature for us. Marg and Catori and the rest of their tribe had been surviving in relative isolation until the Koreans had come for them.

  We were driving about thirty miles per hour down a dirt road in the middle of the desert with our headlights off to avoid being seen. I was currently driving while flipping through options and routes and plans in my head. Ann had her head against the window on the passenger side trying to get some sleep. I drove us over a slight rise in the road and then straight into a seven foot drop where the road had washed out.

  I felt my stomach drop even as the truck was dropping down into the steep, narrow gully. My face bashed against the steering wheel. The air bags went off. I heard glass breaking. I tasted blood and pulled my foot off the gas pedal and decided to just sit still for a second.

  Ann!

  I pushed myself back from the deflated air bag and looked over to where Ann was sitting. She smiled at me over Catori who was bleeding from a couple of places and holding his wrist. His wrist was bent in an impossible direction. That’ll teach him not to wear a seat belt when I’m driving. Verifying Ann was ok had energized me to look around for a way out. The windshield was all webbed and cracked and the front of the truck was pretty much embedded in the wall of the gully. My door wouldn’t open so I tried my window. It was a power window and it was not doing shit either. I looked over at Ann. She had pulled out her hatchet and was beating the hell out of the back-slider window.

  Ann and I beat the back window to pieces and were joined by Reeves and Marg who helped clear out the rest of the glass shards and helped pull us out. We gathered supplies and started putting them in the backup truck. Ann started working on Catori’s wrist. Reeves looked over at me.

  “Boss, middle of a desert with nothing around for miles and you manage to total a truck. You better sign up for that on-line school or your insurance is going to go through the roof.”

  Entry 20: Recon

  So much for redundancy. We loaded everything onto the one truck. Ann got to drive the truck. I was put in the back of the truck with Reeves and Marg. I got why Catori got to sit up front because he had the hurt wrist. Ginny was probably one of the best drivers we had with the best eyesight. I just did not understand how Daisy rated front seat privileges over the rest of us.

  It was cold in the tuck bed. It was not in the slightest bit comfortable trying to sit down amidst all the ‘supplies’ we had back here. We hadn’t done a spectacular job of cleaning out the backs of the trucks so we were also eating a lot of dust and dirt and mud every time Ann hit a bump. She hit a lot of bumps. No matter how many bumps she hit, Reeves never tired of cracking his new favorite joke.

  “At least it wasn’t a ten-foot ditch.”

  He’d let up on it for a little while if I gave him a pissed off look but then he’d come up with some other variation that he found even more hilarious. Several times he had to stick his head through the window divider to tell the people in the cab. I could see them all laughing. I’m just glad the trauma in my life could be used as to entertain everyone else. There was no way that ditch was more than seven feet deep.

  The ride got noticeably smoother and I looked up to see that we were on the edge of a group of homes. We were in a very hilly area so it looked like Ann and Ginny had nailed it as far as where we wanted to end up at. I was pretty stoked that we were at our destination because I was pretty much frozen solid. Reeves had finally shut up about thirty minutes prior. Ginny pulled us into the driveway of a large home and shut off the engine. I got out and my leg gave out on me.

  Reeves assumed I had tripped over something and I could see him virtually about to explode with all the things he wanted to say. Unfortunately for him, we were in a hot zone and he needed to stay quiet. Daisy had jumped down and sniffed the air. She started growling almost instantly. We’d gotten her to the point where she didn’t bark unless we were already in a fight but it was still nerve wracking wondering if she’d forget her training and start barking when it was important for her to be quiet. At the moment, I was more worried about Reeves making noise. He had actually sat down and placed his head between his legs to contain his laughter.

  I wonder how many other crack recon units had to wait for members of the unit to catch their breaths after laughing too much and then wait for their dog to take a million years to walk in circles until finally perfectly happy with a tiny patch of grass to bless with her poop. Once everyone was back to some semblance of professionalism we went around to the back door of the home. We had to hop one of those metal fences to get into the backyard. A pool full of algae and dirt and mud was in the middle of the yard. The remains of a Zombie were bobbing around in it as well. Blue skin picked off on the back and the back of the neck by birds.

  We cleared the backyard and moved towards the glass door on the back of the home. We all had hand weapons out and were ready to try and do this quietly. I was hoping the bodies we saw in the pool had been the owners and we’d be able to walk in through an unlocked glass door to get in the house.

  It was not to be. I had the red light on my phone on to see by. We all quietly approached the sliding door. I tapped on the back door a couple of times to see if any Zombies would show up. I don’t think I was the only one who came close to shitting themselves when a red eyed Zombie slammed his face up against it and started clawing at the door. That never gets old. I looked over towards Daisy who had not done anything to indicate what was fixing to happen. She was crouched down growling at the Zombie who was banging on the door trying to get to us.

  The Zombie was part of a large family that started gathering at the back door to bang away while yelling at the top of their lungs. Red eyes stared out at us. Emaciated hands and jutting cheekbones. Long stringy hair. No telling how long this family had been trapped inside this house. Presumably, for about two years. They actually looked pretty good for not having eaten or drank anything and survived exposure to high and low temps. I’d prefer to see how they looked with bullet holes in them.

  Shooting them through the glass would be ideal. If we had been in the middle of the mountains or on an island somewhere that would have been an option. As it was, we needed to
take them out quickly and quietly. They were making enough noise to get other Zombies in the area curious. We really wanted to avoid having additional visitors while we tried to spend the day resting. Ann whispered over at me.

  “You want to try a different house?”

  I shook my head. We might as well go in this one. Better than waking up another family to add to the noise levels. Reeves had a crowbar out and was ready to jimmy open the door. Once he did that he would jump backwards and Ann and I would jump in to take out the Zombies as they come through the opening. Reeves would bounce back to cover either of us who needed help. Ginny would bash in the brains of whichever ones we put on the ground who weren’t dead yet.

  Catori and Marg would hang back for now. The rest of us had this down pretty good. I wasn’t sure how squeamish those guys were. It wasn’t easy to kill a human. To feel the blade you buried in them, to fell the crunch of bone, to hear their death rattles and watch while the life faded out of them. They were infected and would kill us in a second but it still felt like you were killing a person. I suppose us survivors were all sociopaths to be able to do this on a recurring basis. I might be ok because I couldn’t remember a single time I’d slept in the last year or so where I had not been in the middle of a nightmare when woken up for my turn at watch.

  Catori and Marg did not mind being left out of doing this. Especially since two of the Zombies on the other side of the door looked about eight years old. I mentally prepped myself to bash in an eight-year-old kids head. Telling myself I had to do it to free the kid to get to heaven. To get them out of the hell they’d been living in. Putting them out of their misery. None of it helped. Even as I sank the hatchet into the first one and the second one leapt for me with Ann’s knife dangling out between two ribs I knew I’d see them over and over again in my nightmares.

  We stabbed our way through the Manson family into the house they’d been imprisoned in since they turned. I was struck by how nice the house smelled considering a family of Zombies had been living in it. The Zombies didn’t seem to have any bodily wastes to deal with ever. The only smell was that of a house that had been sitting too long in the Vegas heat with no air conditioning. Vegas was a dry heat so the moldy nastiness wasn’t as bad as it would have been in Florida.

  Once we got in we cleared the rest of the house quickly. We didn’t see anything in our initial sweep so we just sat quietly for ten minutes to see if any Zombies came to investigate the noises. None showed up. Of course, there may be a hundred of them trying to figure out the fence that went around the backyard and we’d never know unless they started making some noise.

  Once we felt comfortable that they were gone we quietly disposed of the Zombie bodies in the pool. Pools were very convenient for hiding bodies. We went to the front of the house and I couldn’t get a good angle to see the truck in the driveway so we went up the stairs to one of the kid’s bedrooms and looked down from there. We had attracted a few Zombies. They were just standing around the driveway and in the street. They must have heard the truck when we pulled in to park. With any luck, they’d wander away during the day tomorrow. What it meant for us right now was we weren’t going to be unloading any additional supplies from the truck tonight.

  I heard loud breathing from behind me. I turned around and saw Marg was sitting in the corner with his head down. He was holding a teddy bear and crying. I realized we were standing in one of the eight-year-old girls rooms. Marg’s daughter was around that age. I walked over and gave him an awkward man hug and then got him to walk with me out of the room. I shut the door behind us and reminded myself to not let him go back up there. Reeves gave us a look when we came down the stairs but Ann stepped on his foot before he could open his mouth.

  We quietly secured the house and then all gathered in the living room to try and get some sleep. We set the watch schedule, pulled blankets over the windows and crashed out on couches and mattresses we drug in from the different bedrooms. Catori came over and pulled me to the side.

  “I don’t know if Marg is ok or not. I just asked him how he was doing and he told me the only thing keeping him from putting a gun in his mouth was picturing himself rescuing his wife and daughter. Just so you know. I’m going to keep an eye on him but if you can too that would help.”

  I nodded. I’d gotten the impression Marg was barely hanging on already so this just confirmed that feeling. Nothing new really. We’d all had our dark periods and gotten through them. What helped was having a group of such tight friends to pull you through. We’d do our best for him but in the end, it was going to be up to him if he wanted to live or die. There was no room in this world anymore for people who weren’t fully vested in their own survival.

  Entry 21: Straight Shot

  None of us really wanted to walk. It was the safest approach. It made the most sense. We could dart from house to house and keep a careful watch for Koreans or Zombies. No one should hear us coming. It was only about fifteen to twenty miles from here to down town Las Vegas. However, walking sucked.

  The one thing we could all agree on was that walking was slow, tedious and a lot of work. If we wanted to accomplish anything when we finally found the enemy we needed to carry more stuff than we wanted to carry on our backs. If we just stayed in the truck at night with the lights off and drove slowly our total amount of noise shouldn’t be huge. We could take turns walking beside the pickup with hand weapons to take care of any Zombies who came out to see what the low hum of the engine was coming from. We could stack the back of the pickup with even more gasoline and anything else we found that may be useful.

  The clincher for this was that if we did find a way to attack then we needed a quick way to get out because no way where we going to kill thousands of them. If we could knock out a hundred I would consider it a really good day. Preferably, we’d find where they kept the prisoners first and focus on that. Nothing would make me happier than freeing Catori’s and Marg’s kin. Once freed, we’d need a truck to get them the hell out of dodge before they ended up recaptured.

  We were in the middle of the raging debate on whether we had to walk or if we thought we could get away with driving when my radio clicked twice. Ginny was on watch up on the second floor of the house and must have seen something she wanted us to come and take a look at. Ann and I headed up the stairs. Leaving Reeves and Catori to continue talking strategy around driving versus walking. Marg had finally fallen asleep after sitting up most of the night staring into space.

  Ann and I quietly moved up the stairs and found Ginny in one of the bedrooms facing towards Las Vegas. Ginny moved out of the way so we could take turns looking out the windows. At first, I did not see anything but after looking around I saw where smoke was drifting up into the air from about halfway between here and where Las Vegas should be. Most of the city was blocked from our view by the mountains this house butted up against. I didn’t get the reason Ginny had summoned us up here for this instead of just telling us later. I stared at her and she finally started talking.

  “Ok. I’ve spotted a bunch of those smoke clouds pop up. What I think is the Koreans are turning up different areas electrical grids and catching crap on fire. What I think that tells us is they are methodically bringing power back to the city but for now only have it in certain areas. Adding this in with what we found out from the guy we captured I’d go with they haven’t had the power back on for more than a month.”

  That all seemed to jive and certainly made the fires make sense. They must be turning on power by substations and then rolling around and putting out any fires or anything as they happened. Or, they were sending in crews first to flip all the breakers in homes and the ones that were catching fire were the ones that somehow got missed. It made sense to do it in a controlled fashion. It must have taken them months just to turn off everything to keep the whole city from bringing down when they flipped the main breaker out of the Hoover Dam. I still wasn’t sure what any of this did for us.

  “If they get the streetlights
working that is going to make it harder to sneak in.” Ann said. That was reasonable. We’d been planning to go in at night to avoid the patrols and guard stations. We’d need to adjust that plan if the streets were going to be well lit by the time we moved in.

  “If our military isn’t pounding the hell out of this place then they must have already destroyed us.” Reeves had joined us. “No way they let them get this setup and embedded without some bombing runs at least. Maybe we could blow up some substations on our way out of here? Inconvenience the bastards a little bit at least.”

  Ginny shushed us and pointed out in the street. A group of about thirty Zombies were strolling towards the city. That meant not all the Zombies out here were trapped in houses which had been what I was hoping was the case. We left Ginny up there to mull over the smoke from the fires and we all went downstairs to discuss what we’d seen. At this point I was pretty sure we were all planning on using the truck when we left this evening versus the original walking plan. Walking had sounded a lot better when we weren’t this close to having to do it.