Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  About three minutes later the door started vibrating as it was beaten on from the hallway side. The vibrating only lasted a few minutes though and then the assailant evidently got bored and wandered along the hall to another door to try. After that, we were back into a waiting game. This time though we had managed to get ourselves in a worse position than before. The Zombies were in the house and we heard them occasionally moving around in the hallway directly outside the door to the room we were hiding out in.

  At least I was not stuck sitting on a toilet. I had food and company which made this about a million times better than that experience. Also, a bed to lay on! We took turns with two of us on the bed trying to sleep as the night turned to dawn and the dawn slowly became a Florida January day. It got to about eighty degrees outside so about ninety degrees inside that room. It was hot and miserable and you never really get used to it but I think we learning to accept it. Accepting that we were not going to be sitting in air conditioned rooms watching TV anytime soon.

  The day passed without further incident. We communicated in stage whispers and by writing on my phone and on the wall with the crayon. We had enough food and water to get us through a few days of hiding out in the room so as little as we wanted to do it we all decided that should be the plan.

  Entry 24: Houdini

  Waiting and sweating seem to be the two things I do the most of lately. When I am not doing one of those two things I am typically running for my life though so that makes the waiting and sweating seem a lot better. We continued our education with Gunny trying to impart life lessons in a hushed voice as Ginny and I listened intently. The guy was a font of knowledge on surviving in adverse conditions. As a marine he had been thrown into crap all over the world that never made it on TV. Conflicts in South American countries that the US was not officially at war with. Missions with vague objectives like, “Go in and find the man in the photograph, take him to the house at these coordinates, kill anyone who tries to stop you.” No explanation ever of why they did what they did.

  Living in Jungles, with every part of your body wet and hot and starting to sprout different kinds of fungus, I guess Gunny already had a lot of experience with being miserable. The bond between him and Ginny was obvious. They knew each other well enough they really did not have any need to talk that much to get points across. On the other hand, I still felt awkward around them and they seemed to still treat me like an outsider. It may be difficult worming my way into that tight-knit little familial unit but I truly felt the effort would be worthwhile.

  The Zombies were spreading back out again although there was still one or two in the hallway judging by the noises we heard. The ones down on the ground appeared to have dispersed either back into the fields or into the house we could not tell. A few of them continued to wander around in the front yard. I asked Gunny if maybe we should just try and take them out with the .22 rifle, one at a time.

  Gunny responded, “That would help clear a path, but from everything we have seen so far they are seriously dialed in to noise. We start opening fire on the three of them wandering around in the yard there may be three hundred down there within a few minutes. Not to mention the ones that may start knocking on our door.”

  I asked if he was ready to roll tonight. He looked over at Ginny who had cast her eyes downwards at the thought of abandoning the one place her parents may find her.

  Gunny looked at Ginny for a long moment then whispered to the both of us, “Let’s give it one more night for the Zombies to calm down and disperse a bit more. When we make it to the Humvee and start it up they are going to be all over us so the fewer within stumbling distance to us the better.”

  Ginny looked guilty about agreeing but it looked like a large load was lifted off her shoulders as she let out her breath and visibly relaxed. We spent the rest of the day napping and planning our route out. It looked like the moon was going to be even fuller tomorrow night which meant we would have some light to see by. We each had a melee type weapon we could use as needed to keep the noise levels down. Gunny had a hatchet, Ginny had what looked like a shovel handle, and I had my unsharpened sword. We had put the remainder of the food we weren’t planning on eating into my bag with the rest of the meager supplies we had drug into the room. We weren’t too concerned there as we had stocked up the Humvee nicely.

  The Humvee was probably about half a mile down the road. That isn’t a lot if you are out for a leisurely stroll at night with your dog and a flashlight. We would be sticking to the road as much as possible, with no lights, and trying to be as quiet as possible. We had talked about going through the woods instead but while Gunny and Ginny seemed like they would be comfortable in the woods they both just kind of shook their heads no when thinking about dragging me through the woods with them.

  I was a bit offended by that. I had been in the boy scouts and made it up to the rank of Life Scout in between my family constantly moving to different duty stations when my dad was in the marines. I’d been camping and been out in the woods quite a lot as a kid. Gunny must have noticed I looked a bit offended at the suggestion that I could not walk quietly through the woods.

  He walked over to the window and looked out of it then looked back at me, “When I was in sniper training you had to approach a group of three snipers in the middle of a field and get close enough to easily take them out without being spotted. I spent each day laying in the middle of a field underneath whatever dirt and crud I had put over myself as camo. My entertainment was trying to guess what kinds of bugs were biting me where. I watched a snake crawl right in front of me and never even give me a flick of his tongue. At night, I moved about a foot or so per hour. Had to plan each move. That is what it takes to be a sniper. The shooting part is easy. It’s the crawling, sneaky, able to handle misery part that is hard. I excelled at that part and I think I’ve been able to pass along a lot of it to Ginny who is actually better at disappearing into her surroundings than I am.”

  I looked over at Ginny, who was pretending to be a lamp, and snorted out the sip of water I had been working on. She let out a giggle and even Gunny smiled. We all stopped smiling as pounding began on the door to the room again. Our lapse in noise discipline had very quick consequences. Instead of going away this time the pounding grew harder as more Zombies joined in. The loud guttural moaning and occasional screeching noise was also emanating from the other side of the door. It looked like the decision to wait until the next evening was not going to work.

  We gathered up our stuff and hit the porch roof to wait and see what happened. With the window shut we could see in but hoped the Zombies would not bother trying to come out once they got in and found and empty room. It was still a few hours before the sun was going to go down. We all moved so we were not in an easy sight line from either the window to the room or from the ground. If one of the Zombies a bit further out happened to look up though we would be pretty easy to spot.

  We were on full silent mode at this point. I try to only make the same life threatening mistake about once a day. It was hot on the porch roof. We were going to be sitting there until nighttime which was in about four hours. We were passing around a water bottle when we heard the Zombies break into the room we had just vacated. We had shut the curtain to keep them from seeing us but that meant we also could not see into the room. A lot of noise came out of the room as the Zombies entered it and it seemed like one of the curtains may have gotten ripped down based on the noises we could hear as we all tried to become one with the wall so as to stay invisible to the occupants of the bedroom. After about thirty minutes of activity it sounded like they had calmed down and gone back into their meditative state in the room.

  We had probably another two hours of sweating it out on the porch roof before we figured we could make an escape. It was cooling down some in the late afternoon with a slight breeze hitting us to alleviate some of the misery. Gunny looked like he had actually managed to fall asleep. Ginny looked as miserable as I felt.

  The
sun took its time going down but eventually darkness settled in around us. Gunny opened his eyes and stage whispered, “You guys ready to go for it? We’re going to have to jump off this porch roof and land without making any noise. Ditch any supplies you can’t jump with or you think will make noise. Priority is to keep a weapon or two with you. We’re probably going to have to fight to make it to the car.”

  Ginny and I both stared back at Gunny. I’m sure she was thinking the same thing I was. We could jump off this roof naked and we were still going to probably make some noise. At the very least it was going to hurt when we landed. How we were supposed to land and not make any noise while holding onto weapons seemed a bit crazy.

  Gunny must have sensed our hesitancy, or could just see the dumbfounded looks we were giving him, “Look, you just need to strap everything onto your body as tight as you can, jump far and bend your knees when you land. Normally I would say to roll it out but that’s a bad idea holding weapons. Focus on not making any noise when you land. Also, make sure you look before you jump since there is a ladder laying down there that you do not want to land on.”

  At the mention of the ladder Ginny helpfully added, “The sidewalk from the driveway to the door also has those rocks bordering it. Don’t hit those either.”

  “What if just one of us went, got the Humvee, and brought it back here?” I asked.

  “Not going to work.” Gunny said and then explained, “The one who got it would have to start it, waking up all the Zombies, drive here to get the others with the Zombies swarming him then turn around and try to drive back through the Zombies that would have slammed this road and the yard by then. We all need to go, get in the Humvee and haul ass out of here.”

  That plan made sense. We couldn’t think of any other options with all of us sitting there for about fifteen minutes. We decided we’d jump one at a time in order of who was probably going to be the quietest. Gunny would go first since he was used to being quiet and had plenty of training on landing having jumped out of plenty of airplanes during his career. Ginny would go next since she just seemed quieter than me in general. I would go last as the general consensus was that I was the most likely to make noise, especially since my ankle was still slightly messed up from having sprained it before jumping over that fence at the beginning of all of this.

  Gunny could see that the more we talked about it the more freaked I was getting at the whole jumping off the roof thing. He offered some advice, “Get some momentum going when you jump so you clear the ladder and the rocks. Land on your tippy toes and roll to the side when you hit. It is going to hurt. You probably will sprain, or break, something when you land. If all three of us jump and no one gets hurt, it’ll be a minor miracle. Especially if you do it. We got no choice though and we need to get this over with. Grab your sword and shotgun and let’s go jump off the roof.”

  Gunny took his own advice and gathered up the gear he was jumping with and headed over to the side of the porch roof. Before leaping off, he told us to give him a minute to get out of the way and that if we heard him scream followed by the sounds of a Zombie picnic that we were on our own. With no further fanfare, he turned and jumped off the roof. Ginny and I went and peeked over the edge and could just make out where he was lying on the ground below us.

  Ginny jumped. We were standing there looking over the side of the roof and she just went ahead and did it. Now I was the only one left and I was not looking forward to this. I looked down and Ginny was kneeling next to Gunny who was still lying on the ground. Not wanting to freeze up if I thought about it anymore I went ahead and jumped. The ground came up fast and I tried the whole balls of my feet fall to the side thing and it sort of worked.

  I had my mind focused on not making any noise which kept the stream of profanity from coming out when the ground rose up and punched me in the body. With no air in my lungs I struggled to rise up and join Ginny and Gunny to start making our way out of here. I eventually crawled over to them.

  Ginny looked up at me and then pointed at Gunny. He was laying on the ground doing something with his leg. I crawled over to him and started to ask him what was wrong. A series of moans from the porch interrupted me. The noise we had made landing had caused a few of the closer Zombies to perk up out of there meditative state and come investigate. Three of them were coming down the stairs with more appearing on the porch.

  Gunny obviously had something wrong with his foot so I handed my shotgun and sword over to Ginny and reached down and picked him up into a fireman’s carry. We started walking purposefully towards the Humvee. Trying not to make too much noise and attract to much more attention. The Zombies followed behind us. I was not sure if they thought we were other Zombies taking them to where we had heard something or maybe they just weren’t sure if we were food or not so they followed us. If it had been daylight or we’d come across some more inquisitive Zombies we would not have made it.

  As it was, I did not think we were going to make it. Gunny started off weighing nothing and gradually seemed to put on weight as we walked. We continued walking in the dark with our entourage following behind. We did not speak or do anything we deemed to be human like. Again, I have no idea why they did not attack us but we managed to walk all the way to the Humvee with the three Zombies following behind. When we arrived at the Humvee I laid Gunny on the ground and reached out to Ginny for the twelve gauge. She handed it to me and brought up her own pistol as well.

  We opened up on those three Zombies, putting them on the ground, then grabbed Gunny and pitched him in the backseat before jumping in and hitting the switch to start the coils warming up. We heard motion from all around us. The screaming and moaning had started as soon as we started shooting. It sounded like a ton of the Zombies must be nesting in the barn we were parked behind.

  Once the light on the dash went off indicating it was Ok to turn the switch to start the Humvee I did so and put it in reverse and started getting the hell out of there. There were immediately Zombies attacking the Humvee. Screaming out their frustration at not being able to get in and get to us. Smacking the windows and climbing all over the Humvee until I could barely see to drive. I gunned it backwards and several of them flew off, giving me much better visibility. I flipped on the headlights and put it in Drive and headed for the main road.

  A few Zombies came out of the woods and got on the road running straight at us but I was pretty experienced now at slowing until they got close then getting around them. We made it out to the main road and I turned right to continue on the journey towards I-95. Meanwhile Ginny had been checking on Gunny who had passed out.

  “I think he broke his foot.”

  I looked over at Ginny. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “I got his boot off and his foot is pretty much solid blue on one side with a bone or something poking into it.”

  “Quit poking my foot.” Snarled a suddenly awake and pissed off sounding Gunny. “It’s pretty much broke.”

  “What do we do?” Asked Ginny.

  “Normally I’d just say to take me to the medic. That may be an issue now though. Thinking we need to set it and get it wrapped and put a cast on it. None of which we are going to be able to do very well in here. We need like a CVS or maybe even a Hobby Lobby or something would have something we could use to set it.”

  “I’ll keep on the lookout but right now we are basically in BFE. I’ll keep on the lookout though as we’re headed towards 95. I think I remember there being some plazas and such. So far the road is staying pretty clear too.” I said over my shoulder as driving down the dark road keeping on the lookout for Zombies.

  When I saw one I would basically slow down until it got up close enough to try whacking on the window and then I’d accelerate past it. The idea was to get them to go on the side of the Humvee versus having them jump on the hood where they blocked my vision once they jumped on the hood and started trying to get at us through the windshield.

  We started encountering a lot more cars and deb
ris on the road as we started getting closer to the interstate. I was on the lookout for a plaza and when I saw one off to the right I started pulling into it. It had multiple military vehicles in the parking lot and boxes and paperwork were littering the entire lot. There was a dollar store, one of those beach stores that sell the cheap body boards, a Publix, a Hair Cuttery and few other standard Plaza type shops. There was a Wendy’s in the parking lot as well.

  I pulled in, shut off the engines, and waited. Within about ten minutes a couple of the Zombies I had dodged on the road went running by, still going straight down the main road and occasionally yelling at the top of their lungs. This attracted at least one Zombie I saw run out of the parking lot we were sitting in to take part in the chase. Evidently he had missed us pulling in and turning off the engines.

  I gave it a few more minutes then told Ginny I would be back in a few minutes. I opened the door and got out with my shotgun on a sling and sword in my hands. I started heading towards the Publix, figuring I could get in and get Gunny some anti-biotics and a bunch of pain medication and try to find some plaster of Paris or a foot sling or crutches or whatever they may have in the Publix Pharmacy. I once again had my head on a swivel, attempting to look everywhere at once and move as quietly as I could through the parking lot.