Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  I figured out my approach to the noise factor would be pretty simple. I was just going to have to try and do it slow and hope it did not make a lot of noise. As far as if it stayed up by itself or not I went and looked at the tracks the garage was on. If I could find something to jam in there after I got the garage door was up it should stay held up. I figured once I had it up in the air I could stand on the Xterra bumper to seal up the track with something. I searched around until I found a roll of masking tape. I ripped off a good long piece of it and balled it up then did it again. Hopefully, that would do the trick for long enough for me to back out and start driving for the main road.

  Trying to think of what else may be screwed up I carefully slid the key into the ignition and turned the car to the battery on position. I was pleasantly surprised to see the fuel gauge go up to about the three quarters mark. I pulled the key out and sat it on the passenger seat. The beep noise the car had made when I put the key in had been pretty quiet but I was cautious about it anyway just in case the noise had been audible outside of the garage. I gave it about ten minutes and when I still did not hear anything I moved out of the car and sat on the ground to wait for it to get a bit darker outside.

  Once I judged it to be suitably dark I put the plan into action. I pulled the red cord and began to slowly slide the garage door up. When I had it where I wanted it I wedged in the tape although it seemed like it was sticking up there pretty good by itself I saw no reason to risk it. I took a moment to listen to the night and did not hear anything out of the ordinary. A cool breeze was actually blowing through which felt pretty great. I went and sat down in the driver’s side of the little SUV.

  I had the key in my hand and was staring at it when I noticed a freakin Zombie had walked into the garage and was moving around on the other side of the car. Evidently the noise had been noted. Breathing hard, I got ready to put the key in the ignition, turn on the car, back out quickly, and drive towards the main road. Another flaw in my plan started flashing in red neon in my mind’s eye. I had no idea how to drive to the main road. I know once I got there I could just turn right and put the pedal down and I should be in the middle of nowhere fairly quickly. I just did not know how to actually get to that road.

  I thought about getting out and just taking on the one Zombie in the garage. Except that now another one had wandered in as well. It also looked like a couple were standing in the driveway. The noise of the garage door being opened must have woken up some that were denned up in a nearby home and got their curiosity going. It was only a matter of time until they figured out there was a tasty treat sitting in the car inside the garage right next to them. I knew now as soon as I turned the key they would be attacking the car.

  When one of them put its face up to the window to try and see in through the tint I turned the key, slipped into reverse and started going backwards as fast as I dared. I drove quickly while they hammered on the side of the car and the glass and started screaming in frustration as they tried to get into the car. The ones who had been meandering around in the driveway took a much more active interest once their cohorts started screaming and I got the car moving. They ran behind me and around me and basically just got in the way.

  I turned the car at the end of the driveway just about fast enough to flip the damn thing over. Luckily it managed to stay upright and all that centrifugal force managed to throw off the ones who had been crawling on the hood and roof to try and get at me. I flipped on the lights and started to drive down the road. There were Zombies pouring out of a few of the houses and into the street and headed straight for me. This plan was going downhill fast. I bared my teeth and hit the accelerator to barrel through to the other side. Somehow I made it to the intersection with the main street running through the community without hitting anything or anyone. I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel to try and make the turn without giving the Zombies time to catch up. I took out a stop sign but made the turn. I gunned the engine and squealed my way up that road.

  I had no clue where I was. I had no clue where I was going. I was definitely heading there at a speed that was not wise. Realizing that I was driving way too fast I slowed down as I went through another intersection. I dodged a couple of cars that were randomly parked in the street and continued driving in the same direction. The street ended at a “T” intersection so I turned left on a hunch for absolutely no reason I would have been able to explain. I slowed down to try and look around but could not see anything. I did recognize the area was getting a bit more industrial looking and I remembered when we had driven in here we had passed a similar looking area. Buoyed by the now familiar looking environment I sped up a bit more and began looking for the main highway.

  I found the main highway. It loomed up ahead of me with a useless hunk of traffic light still dangling flaccidly above the intersection. I knew that when I hit that intersection I could turn right and be out of town in a few minutes. Driving through a no man’s land sounded absolutely wonderful at this point. I hit the intersection and took that sharp right. Accelerating into the turn and continuing on my way out of town. I did have to dodge one Zombie who came out of nowhere and there was plenty of crap on the ground and cars parked in weird places that I had to avoid as well but overall I felt I was doing pretty well.

  The truck megastore was coming up on my right and I briefly considered stopping to see if I could upgrade my ride but considering what kind of Zombie wake may be washing up behind me I decided not to. Passing by the truck store reminded me that not too long ago I had set out from the vape store with Rhonda and John to head over here and grad a couple of trucks to get out of dodge and now, a week and a half later, I was finally fulfilling that mission. To go about ten miles in the new world, two thirds of our party had paid with their lives.

  I passed the truck store, went over an overpass and was thrilled to see nothing on the other side of the overpass but a long boring road. I kept the lights on and my eyes focused and continued on down the road. I figured I would try and drive about 20 minutes which should put me into the middle of the desolate area and then I could start looking for a place to pull off. I was also looking for any cars that may be sitting around that I could siphon gas out of. I was also in a state of shock that I had actually managed to make it out of that bug bite of a town alive and well.

  Entry 20: Traffic Jam

  I drove on through the night for about 30 minutes after going over the bridge. There was water on both sides of the car at certain points and I did see a few cars pulled over to the side but nothing of note. I drove until I saw the reflection of my lights in a string of cars stopped up ahead. All of the cars were sitting still in the right lane so I passed them by in the other lane. I was moving slowly forward when the left lane began to be blocked by setting cars as well. I finally got to a point where I had to ease onto the shoulder of the road and start rolling around cars to keep moving forward. I had a pretty uneasy feeling about doing this.

  The moment I feared came up when I came up on a Winnebago that had tried to turn around and had gotten stuck completely, blocking traffic from going around on the shoulder. I sat there for a minute with the lights on looking around trying to figure out the best course of action. I finally opted to turn around, go back the way I had come and go around the string of cars and try passing through on the right-hand shoulder of the road.

  I started going back and about halfway to the point where I figured I would be able to turn around and try the other shoulder I saw the first Zombie running at me. This one appeared to be a man who had evidently been sleeping in the mud as he was covered in filth. I slowed down, hoping he would run to the side of the car and start beating on my window so I could just drive past him. Instead the mud-covered POS let out a loud shriek and high jumped his ass onto the hood of the Xterra and then proceeded to try and beat his way through the windshield to get at me. This would not have been as big a deal if I had been on nice flat road and could just speed up to throw him off.

 
I was not on a nice flat road. I was basically driving with two tires in the ditch and the other two tires sort of on the side of the emergency lane. The mud-covered half naked screeching Zombie on my hood evidently had friends as well. I started to hear some answering shrieks in the surrounding area. I could not see crap thanks to the Zombie banging on my windshield and I could not afford to go slow or he would be getting joined by his friends soon enough for a party on my hood. I went ahead and started pressing down a bit harder on the accelerator. Nothing about doing that felt safe but I did finally see where the left land had opened up for me to get on the road and drive beside the traffic sitting in the right lane.

  I got into that lane and sped up then hit the brakes to fling the Zombie off the windshield. He bent the crap out of one of my windshield wipers on his way to a serious case of road burn as he flew off the hood. I sped up again and went around him as he stood up and made a dash to get back on the front of the car again. He started running after the car even though his arm was hanging in such a way you could tell it was obviously broken. I lost sight of him behind me as I continued to look for the space to turn around in. I was starting to have second thoughts about that strategy as well.

  I could just head back to the town I had just come from and regroup again. I had a feeling making the U-turn here and heading back down Zombie alley may not be the healthiest choice I could make. The only thing that kept me from gunning it back the way I had come was the knowledge that I had left that town with a lot of Zombies in hot pursuit and for all I knew they were still on their way towards me. I flipped the Xterra around the last car in the lineup and got in the ditch and started driving.

  I was only doing about 15 or 20 miles per hours but I was being bounced all over the place and it was hard to keep the SUV moving in a straight line. The issue was compounded by the fact that Zombies kept popping up out of the brush and the long line of cars. There was not as many as I was used to seeing come pouring out when they were in full blown Zombie swarm mode but it was still unnerving to have them reach out and try to grab me through the closed driver’s side window. I was moving pretty steady as I passed the Winnebago I could see on the other side when the road finally widened out and I was able to move out of the ditch and drive along the side of the road a little easier.

  I saw a bunch of shapes on the ground up ahead and could make out a couple of large vehicles. As I got closer, I could tell the large vehicles were big camouflaged National Guard looking Army machines of some sort. There were a couple of Humvees sitting around with the big Machine Guns mounted on them. There was concertino wire spread out in front of the vehicles, all setup in a road block type formation. The shapes on the ground appeared to be hundreds of corpses. The people in the cars had evidently charged this position and been gunned down. The Zombies who had been chasing the people and forcing them into the lines of fire had evidently won the battle as I could see bodies strewn outside the Humvees and the other vehicles.

  There was a gap in the line of vehicles where there would typically be a gate to let cars through the checkpoint. It was surrounded by concertino wire though. In order to get past this roadblock, I would have to drive over a large pile of dead bodies then smash through the concertino wire. It did not seem particularly doable but I did know the Zombies I had seen earlier were probably getting closer by the second so I did not have a huge amount of time to plan this out. I went ahead and carefully started driving through the bodies. The tires slipped around and there were some disgusting noises coming from underneath the car but I just kept a steady pace towards the area the gate would typically be.

  The front of the Xterra dipped towards the ground and stayed there. I rolled my window down to look and saw that the roadblock had also included rolling out those metal strips that make your tires go flat if you run over them. They had been hidden by all the bodies lying on them. I grabbed my sword and my bug out bag and a blanket and headed towards the concertino wire. Once there I threw the blanket over the wire just as I had seen done on a movie one time. The movie turned out to be wildly inaccurate as I managed to cut myself in about twenty places getting over the wire. One especially nasty cut right in the palm of my hand which probably needed stitches.

  I did not think the 24-Hour Walgreens would be able to hook me up with bandages iodine. I wrapped my hand in a t-shirt out of my bag to try and get the bleeding to slow down and continued moving towards one of the Humvees.

  I picked one of the ones with a canvas looking roof on it as the uncovered ones seemed to have more dead bodied in and around them. I moved over and peered through the window to see if I could see anything inside the Humvee. Looking back the way I had come I could see multiple shapes emerging out of the darkness and wandering around the forward leaning Xterra. I saw one go on the hood while others started pounding on the windows. It looked like they may be busy for a little while with the car so I turned my attention back to the Humvee. Not seeing anything inside I reached down and grabbed the handle and was surprised to find out the door was not locked.

  Opening it slightly I gently tossed my bag and sword into the backseat and climbed in on the passenger side. I got my body all the way in and gently shut the door. I sat there for a minute being as quiet as possible while observing my surroundings out the windows. After a few minutes of sitting there I was beginning to think it would be safe to hit the flashlight on my phone and start trying to find a key for the Humvee when three of the Zombies walked by within a couple of feet of me. I froze in place and waited until they had continued on towards where the other Zombies were still making some noise banging on the Xterra occasionally.

  Looking around again I shielded the flashlight part of the phone with my hands and turned it on. There was no key hole I could find but there was a switch that said run and start on it. I assumed maybe that was how you started one of these. It made sense that you would not want to try and find your keys when people are shooting at you, or trying to eat you in this case. I looked around a bit more on the other side of the big hump in the middle of the car and verified this was an Automatic Transmission. I could drive a stick if absolutely forced to but trying to figure out a stick in a car I wasn’t even sure how to start was a bit intimidating. The familiar looking D and R on the Shifter made me very happy.

  Looking around to make sure there were no Zombies in the vicinity I slowly crawled over the hump to get myself into the Driver’s seat. This was made much more difficult by trying to keep a blood-soaked T-Shirt on my hand plus the three or four other cuts that were starting to really hurt at this point and were leaking blood all over the place. I managed to drag myself over the hump and get into the driver’s seat without attracting any unwanted attention. It had grown very quiet outside the Humvee. Now I was sitting in the driver’s seat, bleeding all over myself, staring out into the night, and wondering how you turned this thing on. It looked like the little switch was in the off position currently and I could turn the dial to either ‘run’ or ‘start’.

  That did not make a whole lot of sense because before I could go to run I had to go to start, right? Leave it to the military to make a freaking ‘on’ switch complicated. I took another look out the window and noted the outline of one of the Zombies shuffling in my general direction. I had probably gotten its curiosity up with some kind of little noises seeping out from my attempts to gracefully get over the hump in the middle of the seat. I looked around and did not see any other movement close by so I slowly ducked my head and took a closer look at the switch. I reached out and put in the “run” position. A light popped on inside the car on the dash above the switch but nothing else happened. I had expected something bad to happen, loud noise, the headlights coming on, or something along those lines so I breathed a bit in relief and sat there with my head against the steering wheel. Sitting there I noticed a hand brake so made a mental note I was going to need to release that as well. I also saw where the lights could be turned on.

  Overall, assuming I could figure out how
to start it, it did not look that complex. I leaned back slowly to contemplate just trying to switch the switch to start and see if that did the trick. I noticed the light had gone out on the dash that came on previously. That did not seem like a good sign. I looked out the window and the freakin Zombie was staring through it at me. He was a big dude and he started banging on the side of the Humvee and yelling as he tried to figure out how to get me. I heard answering moans and yells as the others in the vicinity took an interest in me as well. I turned the switch to “start”. With a rumble the Humvee came to life. Now the Zombies were really losing it with a couple jumping on the roof and the others arriving to beat on the doors.

  I did not remember seeing anything behind me so I put the shifter in “R” and floored the gas, cutting the wheel to the right after accelerating backwards for a couple of seconds. Evidently my memory sucked because I definitely hit something that had been behind me. I was not going fast enough yet for it to disable the vehicle I was driving. I didn’t have time to jump put and exchange insurance info so I turned the wheel the opposite way, put the Humvee in “D”, and floored it again.

  There was a thump as I hit one of the Zombies but the Humvee definitely was built better than the other pieces of crap I had been driving and it shrugged off the contact easily. Rather than risking running into more stuff, I slowed down and screwed around with the lever I assumed was for the lights until the headlights popped on. Looking ahead of me there were Zombies running straight at me and a few cars scattered around the road but otherwise it looked like the road was fairly cleared out up ahead. I aimed for the least amount of impact to get to the road, taking out a mud and leaf covered guy who was just wearing a very muddy looking pair of briefs. His eyes glowed red in the light cast by the powerful lights on the Humvee. His face and torso were covered in the varicose veins making him appear mostly bluish black in the light.