Southern Zombies Three Book Box Set: A Story of Survival, Southern Hospitality, and Southern Blood

by Ann Riley

  It’s time to find gas for the truck. So I tell Diane to look around for a store that may have items we can use. She sees a Quick Stop and we pull in. I have her sit in the truck, ready to drive if we have to make a fast escape. I get out with the 44 and walk towards the store. While I am walking, two zombies come from the side of the store. Although they amble, I am not a fan of them getting too close. So I shoot each of them in the knee. They fall, and still try to crawl towards me. At least I slowed them down.

  Diane yells, “You shot them!”

  I tried hard to not make any smart ass comment, but I failed miserably as I yelled back, “Really? It was that obvious?”

  I hear her say, “smart ass brat.”

  I get into the store and start looking around for anyone in there who may not be infected, but I don’t see anyone. So I walk behind the counter to see if I may can get the gas pumps on as sometimes there are generators in case of power failures. I know this as I was a convenience store manager at one point in my long line of job descriptions. I get the pumps on. While I am behind the counter, I notice cigarettes. Yes, I quit 2 months ago, but I think now may be a good time to start back. And I refuse to ride too far with Diane and no cigarettes. So I load up on Marlboros. I go to the cooler and grab some Pepsi twelve packs as I am an addict and need them to survive. What I wouldn’t do for some ice.

  On my way back to the truck to pump some gas, I notice Diane pointing to the south corner of the store. I am scared to look. But I do. And all I see is a horde of about twenty-five zombies coming our way. I speed up my pace and throw the arm load of stuff I got out of the store into the back of the truck. I hurry and get the gas started pumping into the truck and grab a second pump to fill all the cans Marc has placed in the back for us and fill his second tank.

  We get the tanks and jugs filled and Diane crawls through the sliding back window to get in the back of the truck, with her Remington 770 30 06 bolt action with a scope. What the hell does Marc have at his house, a small arsenal?

  As I am driving, Diane starts picking off zombies blocking our exit. I guess living next door to a son and grandson who like to hunt have made her a better shot.

  I look into the rear view mirror to see zombies falling like flies being sprayed with a can of Raid. We make it out of the parking lot and back on the highway, and Diane crawls back through the window. I look at her and ask, “Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?” she casually says, “Do you think all I do is garden and can my vegetables?” I shut up after that. At that point I didn’t care where she learned to shoot, I was just happy she had.

  Chapter 3

  We continue our drive and we make it to Norcross, Georgia. A small town that has a big road block set up. Now I’m not one to ignore road blocks and police cars. But at this point, I have to wonder why in the hell would they see the need to set up a road block in the middle of an apocalypse? Are they arresting zombies? Do they think they can round them up and heard them to a safe zone? So I ask Diane, “What do you think?” she glares at me as if to say, “what the hell do you think I think?” she says, “I think they are up to no good.” I said, “I think you are right. So what do we do?” “Floor it” she says. “What the hell for? Why do I want to do that?” I asked.

  Diane says, “Well, we have two choices. We can either pull up and see what they want and take the chance that they want our supplies and truck. Or we can floor it like I said and I will shoot out tires as we approach.” “Can you hit the tires while we are moving?” I asked. Her next statement gave me no comfort at all. She replied, “We will see.” I said, “What the hell does that mean?” I was rewarded with a growl of “shut the hell up and drive.” So I drove.

  As we slowly rolled up a little closer, we heard the police in the front of the roadblock yell, “please stop and get out with your hands up.” My dear sister shouts back, “Kiss our ass. We are not getting out and why do you have a road block set up in the middle of no damn where.” I look at her and ask, “Do you really think you need to poke the bear?” She says, “why not. The chances of them being legitimate are slim to none. And I am in no hurry to get kidnapped, beat, raped and stripped of our truck and supplies. How about you?” “Point taken.” I say.

  Again, we hear, “get out with your hands up.” At this point, Diane fires a warning shot to let them know we will do no such thing. I look over at her and ask, “Are you ready?” She smiles and says, “oh hell yes.” At this point I am wondering who the hell took my sister and replaced her with the female version of Rambo.

  Diane starts firing shots at tires blowing them out one by one. We take some shots to the sides of the truck. Marc is going to kick my ass when he sees his truck shot all to hell and back.

  As we get closer, I see Deputy Dawg in the middle of the highway, standing there like he can stop a truck. He fires a shot and hits the windshield, leaving a crack in it. I yell at him that he will be the one to explain to my nephew why he shot out his window. Now, most people will move when they see a huge vehicle coming at them. Not Deputy Dawg. He continued to stand there and I continued toward him and ran his ass over and knocked him in the dirt. As we passed by the last one who was standing there staring, Diane casually flips them the bird as we pass and yells out the window at them, “You dumb asses.”

  “Well, now we have an entourage.” I tell Diane.

  She looks behind to see the other two cars coming at full speed. I tell her to take an aim at the tire to slow them down.

  I look in the mirror and they are still behind us. I hear Diane pop off a shot as I am about to ask her what the hell she is doing.

  The car in the front swerves off the side of the highway and flips.

  “Great work.” I tell her.

  The second car slows to check on their partner and while they are slowing, Diane uses the opportunity to take another shot. She tells me to stop and she takes aim. The radiator on the car starts blowing steam. She has hit it with her shot. I can hear the man getting out spraying a whole stream of expletives as he does. I yell back at him, “assholes!”

  We continue on our way. Happy to have been able to get out of this cluster fuck in one piece.

  Chapter 4

  The next leg of our journey goes without incident. On entering Spartanburg, South Carolina, we decide this will be a good place to stop and rest. There is no electricity anywhere at this point, so we decide to stay in the truck for the night. I look around and slowly get out of the truck with Riley on his leash. He has a tendency to run off when he has gained any scrap of freedom and I didn’t have time for a chase right now. He walks around and takes care of his business. I know this because I turn around in time to see him kicking grass up over his head after he finishes.

  We stretch and walk around for a few minutes, then Diane gets into her stash of food and starts getting us something to eat out. Remember, we are from the South, so she has tons of food from the garden she has canned, and apparently brought with us as she has boxes of stuff in the back of the truck. She gets out the tomato soup. I decide to ask her at this point, “are you going to use your toaster oven to warm it?” she simply says, “stop being a smart ass.” So I shut up in case she decides to throw some dirt over into my soup.

  Riley is happily munching on some beef jerky. He also has a couple of chicken jerky strips he strategically hid in his blanket for later.

  So we finish eating and decide to try to get some sleep. Thanks the Gods Marc saw fit to get an extended cab truck.

  Around 3 am, I was suddenly awoken by a shrill bark right beside my ear. I almost had a heart attack. Had I been in an open space there is no doubt I would have tried to run. I look at Riley and ask him,

  “What the hell are you barking at?” he looks at me, then back out the back window. He looks like he is telling me to get my ass up and look. He is on guard and he has alerted me and it is my job to do the rest. You know the old tale is 3:00 am is the hour of the dead. Well, I can do without any dead hanging around, thank you.<
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  I raise up and look out the window. And I see…. Nothing. Diane asks me what is going on. I tell her that I don’t see anything but apparently Riley did, or he just decided to bark and scare me for lack of anything better to do.

  So I look again. This time, I see a zombie with his mouth pressed to my window, staring, licking my window. Riley looks at me as if to ask, “what are you going to do?”

  Now I don’t know the fascination with windows and zombies. It seems they are for some reason attracted to having their face pressed to a window. But believe me, it’s not a pretty sight. They have pus filled blisters rupturing and oozing all over and dripping down the window. The harder their face is pressed in; the more ooze you get. And his eye pops out. Oh my god. Needless to say, all my supper made a second appearance.

  I get myself together and try to decide how to get Mr. Window Licker off my window without a lot of noise, which seems to bring them running.

  I look at Diane. She is just staring at me. “What?” I ask her. She says nothing, just stares. So I see I am on my own with this one.

  I look around in the truck. Thank you Marc for having a Louisville slugger under the seat.

  I grab the bat and ease open the sliding back window. I slowly push myself through the window. The zombie has clearly turned his interest to Riley, who has his nose pressed to the window, adding his own amount of slobber to the inside. Marc is going to shit when he sees this.

  As I stand up in the back of the truck, I get into my swinging stance. Now for those of you who have never played softball or baseball, let me explain. The zombie is on the driver’s side window. This is going to make me have to swing at him with my left hand. I happen to be right handed. Not a big deal, right?

  As I get closer to the side edge of the truck bed, I lean over and look around to see the zombie, still with his face in the window, still licking it and still eyeing Riley like he is a midnight snack size morsel.

  I pull the bat back over my left shoulder to get as much momentum behind my swing as possible. I swing. The zombie's face hit the window with a loud thunk, Riley barks, Diane screams and the zombie falls away from the window, taking the driver’s side mirror with it as it falls. Marc is never going to let me borrow another vehicle during a zombie apocalypse. How the hell do you explain a zombie tore the mirror off?

  Chapter 5

  The rest of the night went with no more interruptions. We woke at dawn, eat, let Riley do his business, we did our business, and we started off again.

  At this point, we are about 340 miles from Richmond, Virginia. I am still worried about Bobby and how he is faring. I hope we will be able to get to him by nightfall.

  We have to make a stop in Durham to refill the tank on the truck with the gas we got at the store. We decide this time to pull over on the side of the highway. No one is around and it looks like no one has been around in hours.

  I get busy refilling the tank and letting Riley handle business. He is sniffing around in the grass and hunting around for whatever it is he hunts for while he poops.

  Suddenly, he lets out a whine. I look over and see his tail wagging furiously. And he is still whining. I look over at Diane and she shrugs. She’s no help.

  I call to him. Remember I said he is a dachshund? Well, anyone who owns a dachshund knows they do not listen even in the best of circumstances.

  So, he ignored me. I called out to him again. He looked at me, and turned back around as if I was not worthy of his attention.

  Diane was standing there with a bead on areas where Riley was whining. I grabbed the bat from the truck and started over to where he was. I was cautiously looking around and looking in the area he was whining at.

  I finally made it to where he stood, still whining and tail wagging, and I looked in the grass and saw…. Nothing. “What the hell?” I asked.

  I take the bat and start parting the grass back so I can get a better look. Still, I see nothing. I walk down closer and continue to part grass back. And on closer inspection, I see a red ball.

  I look at Riley, who is still wagging furiously and whining and ask, “What the hell? You sniff out a ball in the middle of an apocalypse?”

  Diane says, “I told you his ass is spoiled.” I ignore her. For this is something I already know and have no need to be reminded of.

  So I cave in and get the freaking ball for him. He grabs it from my hand and runs to the truck, waiting for me to let him in.

  About the time I turned around, I heard a shot. I whirled around in time to see a zombie fall behind me, and Diane with the rifle still up to her shoulder. I ask, “Where did that come from?”

  She said, “From the other side of the truck.”

  So what is this? An ambush? Can they plan an ambush? Do they have any thought processes?

  I don’t know but don’t want to stay around to find out.

  We looked at our zombie stalker, finished filling the tank, loaded up and got back on the road.

  Since we will not make it to Richmond by nightfall, we decide to spend one more night in the truck. This time we decide to take turns on a watch. Diane says she will take first watch. This is fine with me as I have been driving since we left home and I am ready for a rest now.

  I crawl over into the extended cab and lie down to nap. Diane is in the front, with her 44. Riley is sitting by her watch too. A dangerous combination those two.

  An hour or so later, I wake up to my phone ringing. “Holy shit, is the phone working again?”

  Diane says, “Apparently so if it is ringing.”

  “Stop being a smart ass.” I say.

  “Stop being a dense ass.” She says.

  Really? Is all the sarcasm necessary?

  I answer and thank the Gods it is Bobby. Yelling. “What the hell is happening? Are you ok? Where are you? Are you alone?”

  I finally get a word in to let him know that if he will stop talking for a minute I can answer him. He then lets me know that he sees the fact that zombies are running around has not made my smart ass mouth any better. I ignore him as we may not have enough cell time to answer questions.

  I ask him if he is ok. He explains that he and some co-workers were in a meeting when the whole shit fest started. Seemingly, most people who took the flu shot turned while they were in the meeting and the ones who were not infected had to fight their way out of the conference room. They were able to get to another conference room and secure the doors so nothing could get in. They are low on water and food but are making the best of it right now.

  “Diane, Riley and I are on the way to get you.” I say. “Excuse me,” he says. “Did you just say you and your sister are on your way to get me?”

  “Yeah! Why?”

  “Well, I was just asking to make sure I heard correctly. It’s not every day that your wife and her sister have to come and rescue you from a zombie invasion.”

  “You didn’t think I would just leave you there, did you?” I ask.

  “Of course not.” He says. “I know your stubborn ass would never have listened to anyone who tried to stop your road trip.”

  “I love you too.” I replied.

  “I need an address so we know where to come to.”

  “I don’t have an address, but the name of the building is Richmond Blinds. It’s on a corner by a mall called…”

  And the line died.

  “Damn, damn.” I screamed.

  “Did the phone lose signal again?” Diane asked.

  “Yes, and all I have is the name of the building where he is and we don’t even know if it is surrounded by zombies or what the situation will be out around the building when we get there.” I tell her.

  “Don’t worry, we will get there and get him out. We are driving this far and I will be damned if I leave empty handed.” Diane says.

  Got to love my sister. She is not going to have a wasted trip even if she has to shoot and run down every zombie in sight.

  I can’t go back to sleep now so I tell Diane to get some rest
. Riley and I sit in the front seat looking out the windows. Everything is quiet. The moon is bright and visibility is great.

  Riley decides he has had enough of guard duty and lies down to take a nap. While he snores, I start trying to make a plan in case we have to go in with guns a blazing.

  The first item on my agenda is to find a sporting goods store. We need more ammo and maybe a few more rifles and handguns. We need to find a tent and camping supplies in case we need them. I would like to have a Browning M2 50-caliber machine gun. I don’t know why. It seems like the thing to have now. Although I would probably let it vibrate off of where ever I had it set up. It is worth a thought, though if only so I could mow shit down at high speed during this crap we have going on. You can never tell what you may need when the world is coming to an end.

  Chapter 6

  We are up and about around 4:30 am. We eat, take care of our business and get started on our way. I let Diane know the plan to find a sporting goods store and for her to be on the lookout for one.

  We finally make it into Petersburg, Virginia and find a sporting goods store we can read. Diane leashes Riley and gets him out of the truck. I grab my bat and get out and we start to the front door. Cars are parked all around in what looks like a traffic jam. Doors are left open, blood smeared all over. You can clearly see a last stand occurred here and the zombies won.

  We continue our trek to the store and Riley gives us a warning bark. There are 3 zombies coming slowly at us.

  Diane raises her 44 to aim and I stop her and let her know we did not need to draw attention. “What bright idea do you have now?” she asks. I reply with a “kiss my ass”.

  I keep the zombies pushed off with the bat while we continue to walk toward the door. When we get inside, I tell Diane to go get a shopping cart and we will start in the gun section.