ZOMBIES: Chronicles of the Dead : A Zombie Novel

by Will Lemen

  The closer to the door we came, the stronger the smell of rotting flesh was present, and the louder the muffled sound of the flies buzzing behind the door became.

  "I can hear growling too, it's coming from inside that room for sure," Gin concluded confidently. "The one with the towels stuffed along the bottom of the door."

  "No reason to open the door. We got what we came for, and I don't feel like fighting my way through a swarm of nasty flies that are tending to their larva that's busy feeding on Pa's decaying carcass. Not just to croak an eater that's not a threat to us anyway. Let's get back to the Hummer and get the hell out of here," I ordered, motioning for everyone to turn around.

  We hurried out of the house, pausing only briefly to pick up the canned food we had scavenged, and long enough for Jacob to make a somewhat sick joke.

  Pointing to the baseball bat that I had used to beat down the old woman, he said. "An old bat, for the old bat!"

  Then with a swift vertical downward swing, he dug the point of his sickle into the deep gash on the left side of her face that I had provided with the baseball bat, and with a rapid twist, ended her convulsions along with her future will to eat flesh.

  Gin didn't find Jacob's humor at all funny, however, Billy and I had to hide our smirks from her as we walked single file out of the house.

  Even though I found Jacob's callous demeanor slightly disturbing at the time, the old bat (no pun intended) had to be terminated with head trauma, or she was going to be zombiefied at some point. Jacob had just preformed that duty flawlessly without blinking an eye, just seconds after making a joke about the weapon used to bludgeon her. Well after all, what did I expect? Only moments earlier he had watched me break several bones in the arthritis stricken elderly woman, and leave her bleeding and squirming in pain on her own kitchen floor.

  Therefore, I couldn't help but smile at his timely attempt at humor, thinking that it was probably his way of dealing with the stress of the situation.

  Back onboard the Hummer, Gin wondered.

  "Are we going to the hospital now?"

  "I think we've had enough adventure for today, don't you?" I answered, while fastening my seatbelt.

  Gin leaned over and locked her door, looking out her window for any signs of zombies.

  "Yes I do," she said. "There'll be other hospitals along the way; we can look for medicine somewhere else."

  We spotted several groups of zombies walking through the neighborhood as we pulled away from the old woman's house, and one by one as they too spotted us, would begin a fruitless attempt to close the gap that separated our groups.

  Out of the town and back onto interstate twenty, we drove west, systematically dodging abandoned and wrecked cars and trucks along the way. We found that the highway wasn't as clogged as we thought it might be, but tractor trailer rigs posed definite problems at times.

  Our speed was moderate, but constant for the most part. Zombies were present most of the time. The ones that were a threat to us were the ones that were huddled around some of the derelict vehicles we passed; many times they blocked the road, forcing us to slow down as we maneuvered by them, giving the zombies a chance to stumble our way. However, the Hummer sat high enough off the ground, and our speed was still fast enough that the undead corpses that did manage to get close were handled with a quick close range head shot from our small arms, or we just swerved around them altogether.

  Of course, there was always the exception to the rule, which was the occasional felony hit and run that was dealt out to over aggressive zombies that staggered into our path, and we couldn't shoot or avoid hitting. However, most of the zombies we saw, could be seen loitering around distant houses and buildings and were not an immediate threat to us.

  We drove for hours, and when we weren't avoiding or shooting zombies, we talked about many things, many things except the spontaneous pounding that I had given to the old woman back in Tallulah. I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  The woman had attacked Jacob, and she was keeping and apparently feeding a zombie she called Pa, probably her husband, which she had locked up in one of the rooms. We could smell Pa as we approached that room, so Pa was getting overly ripe and had been attracting flies for quite awhile, and at some point in time would have probably over powered the feeble female, and made a meal out of her, or at the very least turned her into one of his cannibalistic ilk.

  So we most likely did her a favor, me by giving her a righteous beat down, and Jake finishing her off with the point of his rusty sickle. Obviously, she had lost her mind, just like the man on the river that had eaten his family. Although, not as much of a threat as the maniac on the river, in my mind she still needed to be handled in a like manner.

  It's just too bad that she attacked us with a baseball bat and not a "Maceball" bat!

  Maceball bat [mayssball bat]

  1. A baseball bat with long spikes driven through the end of the barrel of a bat so that the pointed end of the spikes protrude several inches out of the other side.

  2. A medieval apparatus used in conjunction with playing deadly war games in ancient times, and usually incorporated by a nine-man uniformed team on the field of battle.

  For had I hit her with the sharp metal obtrusions on a maceball bat, it would have terminated her instantly, and saved her the embarrassment of flopping around on her kitchen floor, floundering in her own waste products.

  Not to mention it would have spared Jacob the trouble of spearing her brain with his sickle, and putting her out of everybody's misery.

  Back to Contents

  ASSASSINS

  Dusk was only an hour away when the outskirts of Shreveport came into view.

  "This is the first night in weeks that we won't be sleeping in a boat," Gin said, seeming happy about the prospect.

  "Maybe," I answered. "I had hoped we'd get here sooner than this, we need to find a secure place to sleep tonight, and we don't have very much time to find one."

  "We can always sleep in the Hummer," Billy yelled down from the machine gun turret.

  "Only if we absolutely have to," I yelled back. "We've been in this truck all day, and there's not much room, I would rather find some place better to sleep tonight, even if we have to find another boat to sleep in."

  "Either way we better find somewhere fast, it's going to be dark soon, and I really don't want to be clearing houses, or buildings, or boats, or anything else in the dark," Jacob maintained adamantly, as he shook his head.

  "We won't be clearing houses, or anything else in the dark, at least not tonight," I said, as I nodded my head in the direction of a large two-story brick house that was just ahead.

  "It has an upstairs; I thought you said we weren't going into a house that has an upstairs, or a basement?" Billy asked.

  "That's just for when we look for food and supplies; we need a secure place to sleep tonight. So we're going to clean this house of eaters, if there are any, and we're going to do it before it gets dark, and we'll bed down here tonight," I responded, as I pulled the Hummer into the circular driveway that ran in front of the house we intended to sleep in. Then I backed it in as close to the front door as I could.

  "Everyone stay put, I'll check the front door, and watch for eaters," I ordered, as I slowly departed the safety of the driver's seat with my sickle in one hand, and my AK-47 in the other.

  I hooked my sickle on the horizontal handle on the front door and pulled up, and then with the handle of the curved weapon I pushed down on it.

  "Damn, it's locked, I'll try another door," I whispered to Gin.

  "Be careful honey," she said, very concerned that I was walking around the yard alone.

  "Wait, what about the rule about nobody goes anywhere alone?" Gin reminded sternly."We're not going to separate, remember?"

  "Right, thanks for the reminder," I replied, already thinking the same thing.

  Then motioning with my head, I said. "Billy, you come with me, and bring your AK."

 
"Don't get out of my sight," Gin reminded again.

  "One of us will stay in view all the time," I promised.

  "Make sure you do," Gin threatened with a glaring look.

  Billy and I reconnoitered the situation, slowly walking to the corner of the house where the attached garage was located. As I turned the corner hoping to find an unlocked side door leading into the garage, I was immediately confronted by two zombies, one male, and one female. The female zombie reached out and grabbed me by my arm, and pulled me toward her, or it?

  Before I could react, the head of the feminine zombie exploded onto the red brick wall of the garage. In the blink of an eye, the neck, head, and lower back of the male (masculine) zombie also exploded, sending blood, brain matter, intestines, pieces of bone, and an assortment of bodily fluids against the wall, onto the first dead zombie that lay at my feet, and onto me.

  "Don't move mister, I don't want to kill you, but I will if you force me to," a gruff voice called out.

  "Now where have I heard that kind of rhetoric before," I thought, remembering the words the river pirate's leader had spoken.

  "I wouldn't think of moving, moving is the last thing on my mind," I stated, trying my best to act unafraid.

  "Are you diseased, or is anyone with you diseased, or bit?" The voice asked, as a man pushed his way through a row of tall bushes where he had been hiding.

  "Well I wasn't diseased, but now that you've slopped eater blood and guts all over me I'm not too sure," I said, being a little pissed off and unable to suppress my sarcasm.

  "I'm not going to asked you again mister, are you or any of your party diseased?"

  Thinking that this guy might not be in the mood for backtalk, I decided to play it straight with him.

  "No, nobody's sick or bit, or undead," I answered, now more angry than afraid.

  "Well not yet anyway," the man laughed. "You all are lucky we came along," he said, as five more men and two women stepped into the open.

  "I think I'm lucky you people are such good shots, otherwise you might be talking to a dead man right now," I contended, looking back at Billy.

  "That your family with you?" the man asked, walking slowly toward us.

  "Yes it is sir, we don't mean you any harm," I said, unsuccessfully trying to convince the group that we were docile.

  "Mister, if we thought you had any intention of doing us harm, we wouldn't be having this conversation," the man said, very convincingly I might add.

  "We call ourselves the Assassins, although we don't regularly kill people, I mean unless we have to, just the ones that are already dead are the ones that we're after. That's why you still have possession of your firearms. We saw you come into town, and you just happened to pull up right next to the area that we were harvesting," the man claimed.

  "What's your name mister," I asked the man, thinking back to what happened on the river, when I asked another man the same question.

  Before he could answer, I said. "My name is Jack, this is my son Billy. My wife Gin, and my other son Jacob are in the Hummer."

  "My name is Frank, last names don't mean too much anymore. Let's mosey on over to your truck, but first tell that boy manning that Gatling gun of yours, to stand down, we're friendly folk," Frank insisted.

  I turned toward the Hummer, and called to Jacob.

  "Jake, don't shoot, were coming over!"

  Billy and I led the way to our truck, followed by Frank and the seven other assassins.

  "It's going to be dark soon, you people need to come with us back to our camp, it's not safe around here," Frank explained.

  "I'll ride with them," he told the others. "The rest of you, get back to the fortress, I'll meet you there, now get moving."

  As Frank crawled into the back of our Hummer, he said chuckling, as if his comment was a joke.

  "You drive, and hey, if you people kill me, none of you will make it out of this town alive! You have my word on that."

  I laughed at Frank's aphorism, as I too climbed into the truck, but we all knew that Frank wasn't joking.

  An eerie silence engulfed the inside of our vehicle from the first moments of the ride, to the very last, only interrupted by the directional orders barked by Frank as he guided us out of the neighborhood, and to what I hoped would be a safe haven for at least that night.

  We drove for a few blocks in a westerly direction, not daring to even whisper of any plans of how we might handle Frank and his people for fear Frank would overhear us.

  It wasn't long before we came to the outskirts of a commercialized area, and Frank directed me to turn into the parking lot of a big-box membership store.

  "Go around to the back, by the dumpster," Frank ordered.

  I followed his instructions, and pulled up facing a huge sliding metal track door.

  "Honk your horn, two short beeps," Frank prompted. "And I mean short beeps, we don't want to bring any unwanted company to our door."

  I complied with Frank's request, and within seconds, the large garage type door before us began to open.

  "Drive in and park over there," Frank mandated, pointing to an open spot between a minivan and a large military truck.

  We had just meant Frank and his friends, and I wasn't to the point in our relationship where I trusted him. We were outnumbered back at the brick house, and even though we could have killed some of his people, we would have been committing suicide had we fired upon his group. His comment, that if he were killed, we wouldn't make it out alive, told me that we were being watched all the way to our present location, probably by snipers. I felt we had no choice, it was dark now, and Frank had let us keep our weapons, however uneasy I felt, I drove my family into the building as Frank had directed.

  Within the confines of the thick concrete walls of the once thriving retail club store, the casual demeanor of the people we initially saw conveyed an atmosphere of calm to us. The only guards in view were placed on either side of the door we had entered through, setting high atop pallets of store merchandise. However, of the several people in the room, nobody was devoid of some kind of a weapon.

  "You can stay here tonight and maybe for a couple of days, but not any longer," Frank explained. "It might look like we have a lot of supplies, but we also have forty-seven people to feed, forever."

  "Or until they get killed," I thought.

  "We did have forty-nine until three days ago," Frank informed me. "And sixty-four before that."

  "What happened three days ago?" I asked, finally breaking my silence.

  "Three days ago, Sally and Kevin got careless, we were out on a search and destroy mission similar to the one we were on when we found you and your family. Those two for some reason, decided to break one of our cardinal rules. They broke off from the group and began searching a building alone," Frank said, shaking his head.

  "Eaters get'em?" I asked.

  "We call them Out-Breakers," Frank answered. "But to answer your question. No, another bunch killed them. Live people, we're not the only organized bunch; there are some other groups in this town."

  "Probably every town of any size in the whole country, maybe the whole world, has more than just one group, and they, like us, are all probably fighting with each other. One group of people always wants something the other group has," Frank continued.

  "Counting Sally and Kevin, we've lost a total of twelve people to the living, and five more to the out-breakers. The live ones are the most dangerous, out-breakers, or as you call them eaters, don't shoot guns and they don't carry weapons, except for their teeth," Frank insisted. "Sally and Kevin were just the last to go, and they died because they were stupid. We have rules for a reason, and they broke the rules, and now they're both dead," Frank explained, noticeably upset.

  I never knew Sally or Kevin, and I didn't really give a shit if they were dead or not, but I didn't want to lather up Frank any more than he already was, so I said to him applying my best empathetic face.

  "I'm sorry for your group's loss Frank. We hav
e the same stick together rule. We were actually practicing that rule when we ran into you and your people."

  "You're safe here for the night, and tomorrow you can decide whether or not you want to rest up here for a couple of days, maybe even go on a search and destroy mission with us before you hit the road again," Frank suggested.

  I had no intention of going out on some, as he called it, search and destroy mission, with a bunch of strangers armed to the teeth. So I responded to Franks offer by saying.

  "I'll talk it over with Gin and the boys, but she is pretty set on moving on to Texas. She has family there and she wants to join up with them if we can."

  None of what I said was true, but I felt I needed to say something that would give us an excuse to get the hell out of there when the time was right.

  "Well we've rigged up a gas generator to the electrical box, so we have lights in most of the building, and we have another one hooked to the freezers so the frozen food won't rot. No heat or air-conditioning yet, and we haven't gotten to the gas pumps yet either, but we're working on that. At any rate, let me introduce you to some of our people," Frank insisted, as he led us over to a man and woman standing by a pallet of diet soda.

  The man was tall and muscular with short brown hair, a bushy mustache, and a serious five o'clock shadow. He was wearing a blue jump suit with the name Mike embroidered onto a patch sewn above the left front pocket.

  We could see the footprint of a large frame automatic pistol that he had stuck in his right side pocket, and his rifle, an old Russian made SKS that had been imported from an eastern bloc nation that no longer needed it, was lying on top of the pallet beside him.

  The woman was medium height, thin, well built, with bleach blonde hair with six or seven weeks of dark roots showing. She was sporting a shoulder holster that housed a revolver that looked too big for her to handle, but who am I to judge.

  Both of them paid little attention to us as we approached.