Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  I have shot at targets and bottles and such before, but not recently and I never really had a great idea what the hell I was doing. I could load clips like I could bait a fishing hook. Slowly and awkwardly and probably wrong. Gunny and Ginny just stared at me sadly while I described my vast knowledge of weapon systems.

  Ginny perked up, “We can teach him!”

  “Sure, why not, they can teach seals to bounce those balls on their nose, I even saw something on the YouTube about how to teach your cat to use the toilet. I’m guessing this kid can learn to shoot a gun. Or at least load one and hand it to one of us.” Gunny grinned at his analogy of me to a cat learning how to piss in the toilet.

  As awkward as I sounded I wanted them to know I appreciated it. “Thanks, can we cover how to kill yourself when you can’t take any more ‘jokes’. Seriously though, thank you both so much for helping me out like this. I’ll earn my keep around here.”

  Gunny told me to focus on getting better first. “Get some sleep, we can’t do a whole lot with you until your hands heal up. When you wake up again if you’re up to it we’ll do some lessons around weapons and strategy and talk about some survival skills I think will be useful. “

  That sounded awesome to me and I nodded my head. “Thanks again, Gunny.” I managed to get out before the idea of sleep overwhelmed me and I put my head back on the pillow and shut my eyes.

  It went like that for a few days. Gunny and Ginny would take turns coming in to talk to me and I quickly realized the ‘talks’ were intended to be training. Gunny told me stories of how he had survived in foreign countries where everyone there would gladly slice an Americans throat if given half a chance. A lot of his knowledge and experience was transferrable to the threats we faced now with the Zombies. We talked about concealment and noise discipline. Two important topics in today’s world where noise seemed to attract the Zombies like moths to a bright light. He critiqued the moves I had made up until now.

  “What else could you have done?”

  That was one of his favorite questions as we rehashed my adventures and the trek I took to end up here with them. My first thought when he asked me that was evidently I had done the right thing as evidenced by the fact that I was standing here, breathing and with my skin a nice pinkish color. Then I began to get more into the game as I realized it opened up new ways of doing things and thinking about things that would be useful in this new world where the consequences of a bad decision were often fatal.

  The trick was to apply the ‘What else could you have done’ mindset in real time as much as possible to always be thinking of your options. We used our current circumstances as an exercise. The first thing to do is to consider your environment and all the variables in it that are known. All I knew right now is I was in a bedroom on the second floor of a two-story house at the end of a long dirt road. Gunny questioned me on it.

  “How do you know you are at the end of the road?”

  I told him that I had no idea if this was actually at the end of the road or not. “I assumed it was, because when I parked the Humvee I did not see a house up past the barn. I figured this house must be about the last thing on the road. Now that I’m talking out loud I see your point. I have no idea if this house is at the end of the road.”

  That discussion led to the second main lesson he wanted to impart to me. Recon is critical. Whenever you have spare time you should look to see what is out there in your surroundings. If you are not able to go out due to injuries, or being in hiding or whatever then employ whatever other technique you need to in order to learn about the local environment. I knew my dad had been a “Force Recon” guy in the Marines but I had never really known what that meant or what the importance of his job was. The more Gunny enlightened me on what benefits you got from effectively scouting an area the more I began to understand. That understanding made me understand even more that I should probably be dead by now.

  The third and fourth parts I had been half ass doing in my adventures already. Planning and acting. He emphasized that in the absence of a good plan it was sometimes just as smart to act on a bad plan. Acting with no plan was never a good idea. Standing around and planning for too long could also be bad.

  On and on the discussions, went. I was amazed at how much a discussion with a grizzled old marine ended up feeling like a philosophy session at a doctorate level. When it came to survival skills and planning, Gunny was obviously very dialed in. As was Ginny. She had been going camping and hanging out with Pampa since she was born. He doted on her but he did not spoil her. She had obviously spent a lot of time running through even more advanced ‘philosophy’ sessions with the old man than he had even bothered trying to touch on with me. She was precocious. Her biggest problem was that she knew she was smart and since she was thirteen she was very capable of being annoying about it.

  As we discussed planning we did get into awkward stages where the idea of leaving the ‘strawberry fields’ house got tossed out. Ginny and Gunny both avoided discussing it. Saying there was plenty of food to keep us here for months without even having to leave the property. Pointing out the relative comfort of the rooms. The fact that we had plenty of visibility out the windows since we were surrounded by fields. The real reason was left unsaid. Ginny expected her mom and dad to show up at any time and Gunny could not bring himself to tell her he didn’t think that was going to happen.

  As I started feeling better I began exploring the house and checking out the food stores and the small cache of weapons Gunny had liberated from the house and the barn. We stayed inside during the day and primarily stuck to the second floor. Ginny and Gunny would go together to open the closet door where the young boy Zombie they had captured was secured. They had thrown him in the closet that went under the staircase. Once I was able to get up and make it down the stairs with no issue they agreed to let me see him.

  We stood in front of the closet door with Gunny holding his pistol in his right hand and then undoing the lock with his free hand. I noticed he had Ginny standing back behind the couch as he opened the door. I held the flashlight he had handed me to let me look inside. He had cautioned me that the thing was going to start screaming its head off once we had the door open but that the noise should not travel far from the house. He opened the door and I turned on the light and looked inside.

  Laying on the floor inside the stairs was the Zombie they had trapped. The only visible part of the zombie was the head. The rest of him was wrapped in a sheet and what looked like quite a few roles of tape and then some rope as well for good measure. True to the warning I had received, as soon as we opened the door and it saw me it started screaming and gnashing its teeth. The eyes were a bright red and the face was covered in veins giving it that odd blue tint. There was no soul evident in the eyes. The screaming continued to increase in volume as the boy started bouncing up and down and grew more and more agitated. Ginny loudly whispered at us to hurry and shut the door.

  I had seen enough so I looked over at Gunny and nodded for him that it was Ok to shut the door. He did so, knocking aside some of the trash left over from when they had been trying to feed the boy still. It had become obvious after a few days that the only thing the Zombie was interested in making a meal of was them. Ginny had told me that it seemed like it may have drunk some of the water and eaten maybe a bite of the food but for the most part it did not seem to need food or water. Also, no wastes of any kind as far as they could tell, which was difficult to be sure of since they had him wrapped up so tight in the blanket.

  We shut the door and I turned to say something to Ginny about the blanket the creature had on and saw that she was wide eyed and had her finger over her mouth in a shushing gesture. The infected boy under the stairs continued to scream but it was much less audible with the closet door shut. What was much more audible now, was the answering screams coming from outside. Looking out the window did not show any immediate danger but we had all heard the screaming coming from outside and for some weird reason it had
seemed to be an ‘answering’ scream. None of us knew why we thought it was an ‘answering’ scream but we all agreed that was what it sounded like.

  Gunny had decided that the science experiment in the closet needed to go. If the thing yelling was attracting more Zombies than we needed to stop it from screaming permanently. He motioned he was going to open the door and take care of the issue. He then opened the door, and fired one shot which stopped the yelling mid-scream. We all stood there silently listening. We stood there for about twenty minutes before we had decided that it seemed like everything was safe.

  We headed back upstairs and silently gathered some supplies into the room that had the window that went out over the porch. We had considered this happening before and decided if somehow the house were breached and we were swarmed then we would head out the windows and onto the porch and either jump down from there or climb up a ladder we had prepositioned to allow us to easily get up on the roof if need be. Getting on the roof was scary as it would basically leave us trapped but as long as we stayed quiet and out of site we should be fine up there and as soon as night rolled around we should be able to sneak out, make it to the Humvee and be gone. We had already stocked the Humvee with supplies including ammo, weapons, and food for a fast getaway if needed.

  The big problem with the Humvee was that it was loud. Loud enough that we had not moved it from the original parking spot I had left it in by the old barn out of fear it would attract Zombies. We had just sacrificed a lot of the noise discipline we had been working to maintain. Partially due to the feeling, I think was permeating all of us, as you sat out here for a few days that the outside world couldn’t really be that bad. The past few weeks had seemed to fade away into a nightmare as I had been recovering and talking with Ginny and Gunny. The intermediate yells from the boy Zombie kept prisoner and the lack of power in the house being the only real reminders that the world had thrown us a serious curveball.

  We gathered in the spare bedroom and gazed out into the night. We were definitely hearing additional screams and noises now that seemed to be getting closer. We had a few rifles and a bucket of ammo laying on the bed. Gunny had some kind of deer rifle stuck out the window and was staring through the scope out into the darkness. I nervously popped two slugs into the double barrel 12 gauge I was carrying. I also had a .22 pistol that I had shoved in my belt and had rigged up a sling to carry my sword on my back to keep my hands free. Ginny was sitting in the back of the room in a chair we had blocking the locked bedroom door. She had a .22 rifle and the Colt.

  We were all aware the .22 was not going to have much stopping power, that was what the shotgun and the Colt were for, but if we got surrounded and had to plink away at Zombies we did have a lot of .22 ammo to go through. While the .22 may not have, much stopping power it was still better than throwing rocks at the Zombies. Also, the .22 is fairly quiet compared to the shotgun or even the colt. We waited quietly as the random moans and screams continued drawing closer throughout the night. A few times I thought we should just make a run for the Humvee now but looking over at Gunny and Ginny I got the feeling they did not want to leave this refuge unless it was as a last resort. I certainly had no intention of abandoning them and taking the Humvee myself. In the short amount of time I had known them we had grown together as a family.

  Daylight dawned and revealed a few Zombies were wandering around the yard. It did not seem too bad until the field on the other side of the house started rippling as by ones and twos then by tens and twenties Zombies started getting to their feet from where they had laid down in the tall weeds the night before. By the time the sun had been up for about an hour we were counting around over a hundred Zombies wandering around. That was just the ones we could see, we figured there were more on the backside of the house as well and who knew how many down the road or still laid out in the weeds.

  Gunny motioned us over to the bed. Ginny and I carefully walked over.

  Gunny looked at us, “Anybody have any ideas?”

  When we both just stared back at him he continued, “Ok. What I am thinking is we can either wait for nightfall and try to make it to the Humvee and get out of here or we can just hang out in here and hope they eventually go away. We have a ton of food in this place so we should be good for a while. Eventually the majority of those things should wander off and we’ll be able to make a getaway.”

  Ginny and I agreed on the ride it out plan. The ability to sit around quietly had proven to be my greatest survival trait. Must have been all the times I was in ‘time out’ as a kid. Thanks, mom!

  We waited.

  It seemed like the plan was going pretty well. Some of the Zombies had wandered off. We found a crayon under the bed which launched us into an hour-long Tic Tac Toe tournament. About halfway through the tournament, we heard the sounds of the Zombies beginning to beat their way into the house downstairs. Tic Tac Toe forgotten about we all sat and listened trying to figure out why they would be choosing to break in now all of a sudden. The crashing noises down below continued until there was a loud cracking noise and then the sound of glass breaking. After that we did not hear anything from inside the house for a while so we started to settle back down again.

  Dusk came and more of the Zombies wandered over to the house and we heard some continuing to get in downstairs through the open window we had in the bedroom. With the Zombies starting to nest here it had become obvious that we needed to get out. Ginny wrote her name all over the walls and let her mom know that we were going to go get in a Humvee and head North once we got to I-95. I provided the address of my parent’s cabin in Tennessee. That task completed we continued to wait. We had taken turns sleeping in the bed during the day so none of us were very tired at this point.

  If anyone was tired the thought of what we were fixing to do should be enough to wake them up. The plan, such as it was, consisted of going out the window once we hit the deepest part of night and moving the ladder to allow easy access to the ground from the roof of the porch. We all knew the issue was going to be trying to move the tall rickety aluminum ladder from where we had propped it to allow easy roof access over to the side to allow for climbing down to the ground without making enough noise to wake the Zombies. Once we managed to quietly move the ladder over to the side of the roof and out it on the ground the plan was to hit the ground like a bunch of ninjas and then stealthily sneak over to the Humvee and then drive fast enough to avoid the Zombies, the ones we could see and the ones that may be on the road up ahead.

  Overall it seemed about as good as most of the plans I had come up with lately. It started off ok. We were able to quietly grab the ladder and move it over to where we were standing on the roof of the porch with Gunny and I holding the ladder. We got ready to gently start putting it on the ground. We slowly lowered it, hand over hand moving in sync with one another while Ginny had a hand on it holding it steady as well. There must have been a Zombie either standing, sitting or lying down right where the ladder was aimed. We felt the ladder hit something and I remember thinking it seemed a little close to be the ground. Then the ground started pulling on the ladder and moaning. We had been squatting on the edge of the roof moving the thing down hand over hand and when the Zombie yanked on the ladder I started to fall off the roof.

  Ginny let go of the ladder to grab me and keep me from falling. The ladder hit the side of the porch roof, making a ton of noise, then evidently Gunny let it go as well because it went crashing down to the ground. This served as an excellent alarm for the Zombies who started pouring over to see what was going on. We were hoping they’d hit the snooze and wander off again but it sounded like more and more were coming. Ginny yanked hard on my arm and I took a step backwards and avoided falling off the roof. Looking over at Gunny I saw him wind milling his arms so I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backwards quickly. We landed with him in my lap and my arms still around him. He jumped up quickly and gave me a glare.

  “I’m a Marine not a sailor!”

 
Gunny remembered where he was and lowered his voice after the short outburst. We all had some major adrenaline flowing at this point. I don’t think lowering his voice really mattered as all the noise seemed to have gotten the Zombies pretty riled up and they were making plenty of noise by themselves. I was not so concerned about the ones on the ground but it looked like a lot of them were moving right on into the house as well. Which meant that they would be banging on our door shortly. We ducked out of sight by going back into through the window and repositioning ourselves quietly in the room.

  We could not go down because we’d dropped the ladder into a crowd of flesh eaters. We could not go up and escape since we had dropped the ladder into a crowd of flesh eaters. We had plenty of ammo and we had dragged a lot of other supplies up into the room as well so we had food and water too. As long as the Zombies did not try to get into the room we were going to be fine. Bored, but fine.