Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  I kept going, adjusting my walk as I ran into obstacles, until I had reached what I decided was the large pickup truck. I walked around it and groped around until I had found the car beside it and maneuvered myself slowly to where the front driver side door was. Instead of immediately pressing the key I decided to be smart and reach down and just open the door by the handle. Hoping that I had unlocked it previously when I had caused it to start beeping. Feeling smug at having thought that one through before causing extra noise I reached down and put my hand around the door handle and gave it a slow and steady pull. Which caused the mother freakin car alarm to go off!

  Almost instantaneously I heard feet slapping and loud moans in between the blaring horn of the Sentra. Who the hell car alarms a Sentra! Forgetting about stealth I started pressing the buttons on the keyless remote and yanking on the doorknob until it opened. Flinging the sword inside I jumped in and started working on getting the key in the ignition and the car cranked. It felt like that took me forever but in reality, I must have gotten in and pulled it all off pretty quickly. I slammed the door shut, figured out where the gear shift was, put myself in reverse and backed into something trying to jump on the car. I reversed quicker, turned towards the entrance and started driving that way while trying to figure out how to turn the lights on.

  A fist hammered on the passenger side glass. I couldn’t see so I was only driving about five to ten miles per hour. I finally figured out the lights and was able to see in front of me. The glass on the passenger side made a loud cracking noise as the freak out there kept hammering on it while running beside the car. I swerved to avoid a body on the road and then sped up and swerved again to miss someone running directly at the car. Loud moans were coming from everywhere, some kind of gospel music was blasting out of the radio, and the other freak was still on the car banging away on the roof while I saw more and more people starting to emerge from the shadows and run towards me.

  My heart was beating so loud I could feel it in my ears and I felt alternately hot then cold. I tried to stay calm in the face of a tidal wave of fear washing over me. I knew I could not just floor it and hope to make it out of the complex alive. I knew if I went too slow though that I was going to be surrounded and die in this crappy Sentra. I settled on going fast enough so that the Zombie who had been banging on the passenger window started having a hard time keeping up. There were others coming straight at me though and I was not sure if the Sentra would be able to take the impact if I hit them head on so I had to speed up a little bit more to get around them. One of them did manage to get directly in front of me and I had no choice but to run him down.

  His body went under the car and I could tell immediately that it had jacked up the front right tire. It was pulling like crazy to the right while I drove towards the exit. I wanted to either slam on the brakes or slam down on the accelerator to try and lose them but was worried doing anything besides the pace I was doing now would cause the tire to fail. If the tire failed, then I’d be completely screwed. Almost at the front entrance I remembered we are a gated community. Which is pretty awesome and secure when you’re not fleeing for your life and need to make a getaway as fast as possible. Not knowing what else to do I kept driving towards the gate getting ready to ram it if need be. Realizing that would probably be the end of the pursuit and the beginning of the Z-Picnic on me. The exit gate was sticking straight in the air. Sweet. Death avoided by whatever random chance had caused the gate to get stuck pointing up I sped up down the long curving drive on the way to the highway. I tapped the brakes a few times while alternately accelerating and the Zombie on top of the car finally slid off.

  Looking behind me in the glow of the brake lights it looked like I had a nice pack of them trailing me now though so that wasn’t good. Risking more damage to the tire I sped up to give myself a bigger buffer between the car and the trailing death squad. Rounding the last curve, I saw a large amount of piled up traffic and congestion on the highway. None of it was moving but all of it was in my way. I slowed down to weigh my options and decided to try going over the curve and up on the embankment to get around the main pileup and then hope that it cleared up enough to let me get on the road before my tire fell off.

  Slowing even more, I hit the curve and went over it and up on the embankment and rolled down it for maybe 100 yards until I saw that the road was clear enough for me to get on it and start driving. Which was good, as faster members of the squad of ghouls behind me had managed to catch up and had started whacking on my windows and door and generally scaring the crap out of me. I rolled onto the highway and sped up enough to leave them behind without, hopefully, messing the tire up any worse. Feeling like I’d managed to finally get at least a brief reprieve I drove quietly for a few minutes until a binging noise made me look down and see that the fuel gauge was now showing empty. At almost the same time the car shuddered and started making a whacking noise and puling hard to the right as the tire went totally out.

  I went ahead and accelerated down the road until the car gave up and died with a screeching crunching metallic noise. At that point I got out, heard moaning behind me, grabbed the sword and hauled ass up the road into the darkness again. On the plus side, my back felt better running blindly down the road than it had squished into the tiny seat with the backpack on hunched over the steering wheel.

  Entry 8: In the Open

  I ran until my legs felt like jello. Then I made myself run a little further. Hearing moans in the distance enabled me to pick up a second, third and finally a fourth wind and keep trudging down the road until I just could not do it anymore. The moon had managed to come out at some point and start shedding a little bit of light so I was able to see around me a bit more than earlier. Not that there was anything to see besides the road and then more road followed by the road. I must have driven through here a dozen times in the last month when I still owned a car and I did not even remember the stretch I had just spent hours trudging down. Why should I? Like most people I would have been messing around with the radio while I flew through this desolate stretch at around 80 miles per hour.

  I went over to the grassy median and threw the knapsack on the ground, collapsed beside it and started rummaging in it for a water. I opened the water and took a big gulp of it then lay my head back on the grass and closed my eyes for a second.

  When I opened my eyes, it was morning and I was laying in the middle of the median of a big road with no cover anywhere near me. Definitely another rookie move. I looked around by slowly moving my head side to side and trying not to move my body too much and did not see anything. I lay still for a couple of minutes listening and did not hear anything. I slowly stood up and the coast still appeared clear so I pulled on the knapsack and grabbed the sword and moved over to the side of the road and continued my trudge.

  I knew that in ten minutes of driving this route I would typically be hitting a wider stretch in the road kind of town that had the requisite Walmart and car lots and a Flea Mall on Sundays. That would be the last piece of civilization passed prior to ending up on 95. Knowing there were car lots up ahead made me optimistic on being able to get into a car and actually drive the rest of the way instead of continuing this walking around in the open BS. I felt like I had a flashing neon “Eat Me” sign on my back. I thought about getting off the road and trying to work my way to the town through the underbrush and weeds instead of staying out in the open but decided I would wait until I actually saw some civilization before resorting to that.

  Putting together what I had observed so far about the blueish infected Zombie like people who had been attacking me I decided they were not really Zombies since they seemed to still be alive. They were mindless and violent and had a group think kind of mentality and they also liked to chew on people and cats so I decided for lack of a better term and because “Cannibalistic Smurf People” seemed condescending, I would just go ahead and refer to them as Zombies. Further, since I have to be the one typing all this stuff into the journal on m
y phone here and I do get carpal tunnel sometimes I may just call them Z’s every once in a while. Nice to see that my smart phone still has some usefulness left to it since the data network and voice network and everything were already down when I had woken up. The “Journal” app on the phone is at least letting me keep this record and document what I am seeing and put my thoughts together and honestly keep me sane by giving me somebody to “talk” to. I am definitely lucky I purchased the solar charger pack for the phone, giving me plenty of power to randomly check and verify that I still don’t have any sort of signal.

  The data network not working is also going to cause me some issues with navigation. I’ve seen maps in the stores but I have never bought or used one. Why would I when all you have to do is hit your Maps app and say the name of the place you are going and it tells you how to get there. I really have only a vague idea of how to even get to my parent’s cabin without the robot lady who lives in my phone telling me how to get there. For now, the plan is to try and get a truck, basically anything more rugged and durable than a Sentra would make me happy, and head to 95 then start going North then try and figure it out from there. At some point, I’ll need to turn left, if I run into the Mississippi I’ve gone too far.

  Up ahead on the road I started seeing some signs of civilization so I moved my sweaty, stinky, hurting body over into the underbrush and started beating my way towards town that way. I was not invisible from the road by any means but a casual observer at a distance should not easily notice me moving along. The Zombies I had seen up close so far seemed to have goopy red eye syndrome so I was thinking their eyesight may not be the best anyway. Or, maybe it made their eyesight even better with magically magnifying gooptacular properties. Who knew, the important thing was that walking through the underbrush really sucked and I hated it.

  Entry 9: Cleanup on Aisle 7

  I slowed down as I headed towards the edge of the first building in what was a small town. Biggest claims to fame being a nationally known red neck comedian who “Got Her Done” and a large Truck Dealership. I was still pretty far down the road from the dealership but was hoping that it would have some vehicles I could get for the low-low price of smashing some windows to find the keys. I moved towards the back of the first small building in a small plaza set beside the road. There was a discount pet food store, a store where you could go to “vape”, and the one I was currently headed towards the back of was a 24-hour laundry mat.

  I walked slowly, keeping an eye out for anything that might somehow look abnormal. The problem with that being that everything was weird. Stepping out of the grass onto the plaza the first thing that had caught my eye was the glass was missing from about half the windows in the stores. The insides of the stores themselves looked ripped apart, with shelves knocked over and random merchandise all over the place. No lights were on of course, so I could not see too deeply into the stores but I would not doubt if there were some blue toned sleepers in there. Not having any desire to find out if there were any sleepers in there I made sure to look at the ground as I moved in addition to looking everywhere else to avoid stepping on anything that might make a noise and wake up anyone sleeping.

  There were no cars on the street really. Since leaving the intersection by my apartment the roads had stayed pretty clear of cars. There were none parked in this plaza either. I assumed this was because whenever this had started everyone with a car had gotten in it and tried to leave the vicinity. Making it around to the back of the building and starting to walk forward I saw a large, bald man laid out on the concrete. One of his legs was twisted behind him and his jeans were stained dark with blood. The jeans had been pulled up at the bottom where his legs had been bitten enough that the bone was showing through. His shirt was jacked up with a large portion of his belly missing as well, allowing his guts to hang off the side of his protruding gut.

  This was the first time I had really taken the time to see the lump on the ground as a dead human being. The smell coming from him was something like spoiled meat and rancid dog shit. I could taste it in the back of my throat and it made me want to stop breathing and it made me scared to swallow. I started walking around him and as I got about even with him I started puking. It was splashing on the ground and I knew it was getting on the man’s corpse which made me feel even sicker. I turned away from him and started crawling, still puking, as I tried to distance myself from him both physically and mentally.

  Dragging the sword on the ground with my knapsack rattling around on my back, plus the puking, had made a lot of noise and it did not go unnoticed this time. I heard footsteps and trash being knocked around from between the “vape” store and the pet food place. Setting aside my desire to curl up in a ball once the puking subsided, I got to my feet and moved to go back behind the building and hide. Before I could get started on that plan one of the blue infected freaks came around the corner and caught site of me. Where he had been shuffling before he started moving at a jog then a sprint straight at me. This one was wearing boxers and a t-shirt and one sock. The t-shirt was stained and hanging loose on the man’s blue tinged body, his red eyes were focused intently on me. His mouth was open and he was letting out a deep guttural growl that horrified me. I froze in terror just staring at him running at me.

  I managed to pull the sword back in the air and tried to focus on getting ready to swing it at the head of the monster charging me. I was so terrified my whole body was shaking and I felt like I had no strength left. The sword was heavy, I was cold, it would all be over when the monster embraced me. The monster embracing me vision is what got me moving. Knowing that I would end up like poor fat bastard laying behind me lent strength to my arms. I stepped towards the man and swung as hard as I could, with my eyes closed. By sheer random luck I managed to hit him just right.

  Or at least right enough, not sure how many ways you can hit someone in the head as hard as you can with a big old piece of steel and it not put them on the ground. After the shock of the hit ripped my eyes open I looked down to see the would be killer laying on the ground with the side of his skull dented in. My sword was covered in hair and blood so I scraped it on the back of a broken down cardboard box and tried to stop looking at the mans caved in skull as I started moving down the street again, being careful to try and stay out of site and quiet as much as possible.

  I grabbed a water out of my bag and did a quick mental inventory. I had the sword, which I now knew worked very well, another 4 bottles of water, two warm nasty sodas, about 11 squishy cheese sticks, and two bags of Fritos. I had the Outback knife in the knapsack so I tucked it into my belt instead, in case any bread needed to be buttered quickly. After the events of the last few days I decided in addition to a truck and more regular supplies, I also needed a nice pair of hiking boots. My sneakers were looking extremely ragged.

  I took a long pull on the water and then turned around and puked it out. I leaned against the back of the “vape” store and just let myself breathe for a few minutes. Then I stood up straight and kept on going. I figured that was about all you could do in this situation and that no matter how bad it got as long as I wasn’t blue or dead I was still winning. I did try to dismiss the sound the sword had made hitting the guy’s head from my mind though.

  Entry 10: Rhonda and John

  Rhonda woke up before the alarm clock went off and tried to go back to sleep. After tossing around for a little bit and trying to ignore her bladder, she finally decided to crawl out of bed and go use the toilet. Being the loving wife that she was she pulled the blanket off John as she was headed towards the bathroom to go ahead and get him started on his waking up process. Plus, he was cute when he was angry and sleepy at the same time and she loved seeing him fumbling around for the blankets.

  Finishing up in the toilet she headed over to the sink to wash her hands and noticed on the clock that she only had about three minutes left to sleep even if she did crawl back into the bed now. Deciding the better, more responsible idea was to go ahead and get
in the shower and get ready for the day she turned the faucet to the hot and on position. Pulling her hand back quickly to avoid the initial onslaught of cold water streaming down into the basin of the tub. She quickly stripped off her clothes and started brushing her teeth while she waited for the water to heat up to something bearable.

  Meanwhile John had walked in and used the toilet followed by giving her a playful slap on the ass which she would have appreciated more if he had washed his hands first. He looked over at her and raised his voice to compete with the water streaming down.

  “Anything exciting planned today?”

  Rhonda looked back over at him to make sure he was not trying to get in the shower ahead of her and shook her head as she told him “Nah, just work, the store, then headed home. I’m thinking we order a pizza and rent a movie. Make this the best Tuesday since last Tuesday!”

  John walked by and started to slap her ass again but she jumped out of the way and quickly moved into the shower. “Tuesday doesn’t get that good. Hands to yourself!”

  Mumbling about the joys of marriage John headed into the kitchen of their small duplex and started putting together the coffee to get that stated. Once he had the water added and a filter filled up with whatever was the BOGO brand this week he started the coffee maker and started looking for the remote.