Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  Giddy and clean I opened the door, Reeves was standing there with a bag of fresh clothes and his weapons. He tapped his watched and muttered, “’Bout time Princess.” Then he started to push his way past me, obviously looking forward to a his 5-bottle cleanse.

  “Hey Reeves.” I got his attention and asked the question that had been burning in the back of my head, “Why did you say I was in charge when they asked?”

  Reeves smiled, “First, I got no desire to be responsible for anyone else. Second, there are no more paychecks so being an officer just gets you all the work without even the benefit of higher pay.” Getting a little more serious, “Plus, you do have something about you that instills some confidence. There’s also the fact that you’ve managed to stay alive while being on the run while the rest of us have just kind of stayed in one spot and gotten lucky. Mostly though, I’m good looking and charming so don’t need to be an officer to pull chicks while I figured you could use all the help you could get.”

  Laughing at his own hilariousness Reeves shut the door to the shower room leaving me to think about what he had said. I felt like parts of it did show some pretty keen insight. I had been able to keep myself alive but I’d lost multiple people along the way. Of the people, I had met since leaving my apartment only Ginny and Reeves had made it this far and Reeves was a fairly new acquaintance. Did I want to be in charge? If I took on responsibility for these people, then my plan to get to Tennessee and hole up at my parent’s place would be pretty much dead in the water. Although, I probably didn’t need to think about it too much since Ann pretty much had this group covered already. Maybe I should just exit, stage left.

  “Penny for your thoughts.” Ann startled me out of daydreaming around about whether to lead or not to lead.

  “I don’t have change for that so you’d be getting ripped off.” I spouted back, then continued, “Thanks for forcing the showers on use before nap time. I can’t even describe how awesome it feels to be clean again.”

  “Trust me, everyone in here appreciates your taking showers, no one is going to begrudge you the extra water you used. You guys were starting to get a bit ripe from being out on the run for so long. It should be getting light outside by now so what we typically try and do is get to sleep and sleep for as long as we can during the day. We have some battery powered fans we use to try and make it slightly less miserable in here but it still can get pretty bad. Basically, just blowing around hot air. The important thing is we try hard not to make any noise. So, I’m going to go hit it and you should too. I told Reeves the same spill while he was waiting for the ‘princess’ to get out of the shower.” With a grin at her last remark Ann headed towards her corner of the space.

  I saw a few people had fans pointed at themselves and I grabbed one off a cart to give a try as well. I sat down on the mattress next to Ginny who was already assembling her fan and working on getting the batteries in it.

  “I don’t think I’m going to have any problem at all sleeping for the whole day. I’m freakin exhausted. Good night!” With that said, Ginny flipped on her fully assembled fan and laid down on top of her mattress and sheets and seemed to instantly fall asleep. I stayed up awhile finishing up this entry and timing Reeves in the shower to see if he took long enough to qualify as a princess. He didn’t.

  Entry 31: Fortify

  I woke up in the morning / evening eager to take on the day / night. Even though we were all sweating and fairly miserable we did manage to sleep about ten to twelve hours each which shows how exhausted we all were. It was the first sleep I had in a long time where I felt fairly secure. Not to mention being clean! We started off clean anyway, I can’t speak for the others but I woke up in a puddle of my own sweat. The sweat did smell slightly of soap though, probably the parts I had not been able to get rinsed off.

  We were all becoming more used to being nocturnal beings since day time normally meant sitting around staring at the walls while night time you typically had more freedom to move about. I sat up and reached over to grab the bottle of drinking water I had beside my mattress. One of the teenager looking boys in the room had dropped them off earlier. The way it worked at the moment was everyone got six bottles of water per day. This should be enough to keep you from becoming dehydrated but it would still wear through the stock eventually.

  Looking around I counted the number of people in the room. There were five men who looked over the age of twenty, four women including Ann, three teens including Thomas who had a messed up looking arm hanging in a sling still, and a set of fraternal twins who looked to be about six or so. I knew there were at least two more wandering around as I did not see either Hank or Barry. Each person had their own stash of water and supplies by their mattresses with the different familial units gathered together in clumps. I noticed some of them had some hunting rifles and others had baseball bats and other makeshift weapons by their beds but none of them were carrying the weapons around with them like we were.

  I got up, grabbed my sword, downed the water and headed towards Ann’s office. The door was open and she was sitting behind the desk writing in a ledger by the light of a battery powered lantern. I leaned on the edge of the door waiting for her to finish up whatever it was that she was working on. After a minute or so she finally looked up at me.

  “Hey Steve. Sorry about that, I’ve been trying to track how long our supplies are going to last so we can do some planning around that. I basically just started, I hate paperwork, but even though it looks like we have enough supplies here to last us forever we’re going to run out. I just need to figure out when and how can we extend how long it takes for us to run out. It’d be real nice to have a computer for this but I’m making do with the eight million tons of accounting ledgers we found on a pallet.”

  “No problem, better you than me on the accounting stuff. I’ve been thinking maybe there are things we should be doing proactively to try and shore this place up so it doesn’t go down too fast if we are swarmed.” I walked into the office and looked at a chair and Ann nodded for me to sit in it. She had pushed the ledgers away from herself with revulsion, she evidently did not like paperwork either.

  I continued with my thoughts, “I was thinking we could shore up all the entrances and exits except for a couple we keep as emergency escapes with dog food bags, kitty litter bags, stuff that we can move and stack without necessarily making a ton of noise. Once we have the windows and doors covered that would help with sound as well so we could move around a little bit more openly. I was also thinking we should try and get up on the roof and take a look around. I saw a ladder going up the back when we were coming in. Other than that, you’re already working on my other idea which was to document what supplies we have and figure out how to make them last as long as we can. I’m thinking also that Florida sucks so if this whole apocalypse thing is going to keep going much longer maybe we head somewhere with a better climate?”

  Ann took a minute to consider what I had said then went ahead and threw an idea out that caught me off guard a bit but was probably a good idea. “I was thinking you managed to survive out on your own for quite a while. I noticed you walked over here holding your sword and the first thing you seem to always think about and look for is a way out if you need it. The ‘Zournal’ you have been keeping was a good high level of what has been going on and gave me some ideas but I think we should gather everybody up for you to talk through your experiences and try and impart some of what you’ve learned to the rest of us.”

  “Uhhh. Sure, but if you’re looking for people to provide training on this kind of stuff wouldn’t you and Reeves be the more practical ones?”

  She smiled, “I already asked Reeves, he said you’ve been out in the field more than he has and you’re still alive so you must know something or other. Everyone here knows me and knows my story already. I think we’ll all want to take a turn talking through strategy and tactics and lessons learned but I think we should let you kick it off. Anyway, just an idea, mull it over the
n let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I’ll go ahead and tell everybody that’s what we’re doing.”

  Smiling at her assumption that I’d agree to the plan, “Ok, sounds good. Other question I had. Do we have floorplans for this building? Something that shows all the entrances and exits? That way we know where we need to carry the bags too and how much stuff we need to block off. Although, I’m leaning towards mostly the front glass doors need to be closed off. “

  “The best we have as far as that goes is the emergency fire map things that are posted around. I can draw it out for you on some of this ledger paper.”

  Sounded like a plan to me and I went around to the side of the desk she was on and leaned in to watch her draw out the floorplan. She was drawing some lines and junk but I was mostly smelling her neck at that point. She’d put on perfume?

  She leaned against me and next thing I knew I had gone from walking around her desk to watch her drawing to jumping over her desk to get the damn door shut. Since everyone seems to insist on reading my private thoughts out of this thing I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. It was definitely the highlight of my Apocalyptic Adventures so far.

  Afterwards, Ann told me to, “Put your clothes back on. We have work to do.”

  I must have looked a little hurt because she kissed me and added, “Don’t worry, I totally needed that. Why do you think I insisted you take a shower and get some sleep?”

  Turns out she is quite the planner. We both put back on our sweaty clothes, thinking we had to wait a week before we’d be able to get clean again. I was wondering if we were both sweaty and gross would she care or did we both have to be clean? She evidently had already moved back to planning for the night time pow wow to do a lesson learned type briefing. I made the requisite jokes about how well the “de-briefing” had gone at which point she basically kicked me out of her office, telling me she thought I should go take a walk with either Hank or Barry to see what needed to be done to shore up the doors.

  I opened the door and started walking towards the mattresses Reeves and Ginny were sitting on when I felt all the eyes on me. Looking around I realized we had not been super sneaky about what had just happened. Ginny and Reeves both had big stupid looking grins on their faces as I walked towards them. I pretty much knew I was fixing to be questioned about how the ‘de-briefing’ had gone. Instead, Ginny threw out a comment about me looking flushed while Reeves went with it smelling funny near me and asking when the next showers where scheduled for.

  I decided to take the high road, “Ok guys, I talked to Ann and – “

  Ginny had made a very immature gesture with her finger on one hand and two fingers forming a circle on the other hand and started saying, “talked to Ann…” which had made them both start laughing like a couple of drunk Hyenas.

  I tried again, “Ok, shut up, seriously, we came up with a plan – “

  I waited impatiently for them to stop laughing and get control of themselves. I looked over towards Ann’s door but she was definitely not leaving her office anytime soon. Especially if she could hear the two Hyenas out here. Once they seemed to have regained control of their faculties I told them what had been discussed. Reeves volunteered to go with me to check out the doors while Ginny offered to go help out Ann with the paperwork, but that she was actually going to help with the paperwork.

  Resisting the urge to trip Ginny as she walked by I waited for her to leave then looked over at Reeves. “You ready?” I asked him.

  “Sure, let’s go stack some cat food, quietly. Sounds like a blast. Speaking of which, remind me while we’re out there to try and find a game boy or something. I’m seriously getting bored laying around all the time while you’re busy Captain Kirking the natives.”

  I accidentally, on purpose, spilled some of my water on him as I strapped on my pistol, grabbed my sword, and tried to figure out how to get the red cellophane to stay over the bulb on the flashlight. Reeves, still laughing to himself at his Captain Kirk hilarity, grabbed the flashlight from me and snapped a rubber band around the end of it to hold the cellophane in place. I had been wondering what the rubber bands were sitting there for and had lost two of them shooting them at Ginny, so, good to know.

  We began making our way towards the door that would lead us out into the main section of the store. I had taken the lead with Reeves backing me up, he had his baseball bat in one hand and his rifle slung around his back. Opening the door, we cautiously and quietly entered the main floor area. Moving forward towards the doors at the front, where we knew either Barry or Hank would be pulling Sentry duty. As we got closer we started whispering and making noises to identify ourselves as regular people approaching the sentries so they’d know we were coming and wouldn’t panic and start shooting if we popped up out of nowhere. Mental note, next time we should grab a pair of the Walkies to help with the communication and coordination.

  A minute later Hank emerged from behind a long line of large Plasma TVs. He looked at us and stage whispered, “Hey guys, what you doing out here?”

  “We talked with Ann and we’re thinking it would be a good idea to fortify this place a bit more. Maybe stack up dog food bags or something in front of those glass doors and figure out a way to block off any additional doors. Figure out how we can keep those things out but let us escape quick if we need to.” I walked up to him and continued, “Any ideas you have around how we could do it would be much appreciated.”

  Hank paused and considered the question for about ten or fifteen seconds before answering, “I reckon the best thing to do would be to try and stack something like the cat food or dog food like you said and then try and mesh it altogether with carpet or something to add another layer of soundproofing. We have forklifts but they’d be too noisy so we’re going to need to move everything by hand and we have to do it quiet. Quiet means slowly and methodically so it isn’t something that will happen right away but if everybody chips in and we limit each person to only moving like four or five bags per night so they can be focused then we should be good to get it done. I can get that organized and rolling if you’d like. Now, what else have you come up with?”

  “We want to get on the roof and take a look around.”

  Hank considered this as well. “Every time we open an outside door it’s a huge risk. Especially the ones in the back that are near the ladder that takes you up on the roof cause there isn’t a way to look out them before you open them. That means the whole herd of them could be standing on the loading dock and you wouldn’t know it until you had the door open. Let me chew on that one for a bit but I’d say we don’t do that until we figure out a way to make sure the coast is clear before opening the door. Every time we’ve opened up to let someone in it’s been a pretty big risk to this place.”

  “Where do you collect the water for the showers?” I asked.

  “We have the barrels out front here. We bring out a hefty bag of empty bottles and pull the barrels and other containers we have setup behind the wall so no one can see us and we fill them up there. We sit here and stare out the doors for a few hours first and don’t go fill up the bottles if we see anything moving anywhere. We’ve actually only been doing that for about a week. We were just using the runoff from the freezers melting down but most of that got wasted before we figured out good ways to collect it...” Hank looked a bit chagrined that they had not been able to do a better job of collecting the shower water.

  “Makes sense. Ok, so you’re good with rounding up some guys to start stacking stuff in front of these glass doors? If so, we’ll go and try to figure out a way to maybe drill a hole through the wall or something back by the loading dock to give us a way to check it out before we go out that way. We’re also going to start trying to have planning sessions periodically to brainstorm about other things we could be doing and what we need to be doing now to stay alive and happy. Ann has started inventorying everything so that we can try and figure out what we may need.”

  I quit talking and turned to go. Re
eves piped up, “At least we should be set for Toilet Paper for the next hundred years.”

  Hank and I both nodded in agreement as we looked at the huge amount of Toilet Paper on the shelves behind us. “Too bad it’s not ammo.” I threw out as a joke.

  “For ammo you’d want to go down a couple of stores to the guns and ammo store.” Hank piped up.

  Reeves and I turned and stared at him. “Guns and Ammo store?” Reeves asked.

  “Yep, one of those ones that popped up back when all the politicians were trying to take away everybody’s guns. I’ve never actually been in it but I’m thinking a store called ‘Guns and Ammo’ probably has guns and ammo in it.”

  Mentally smacking myself in the forehead I asked, “Any other unique stores in this plaza?”