Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow

by Merritt, R. S.

  “Good to meet you all. I’m Paul Fisher, I was in the marines for a while then moved back home to Arkansas when the country singing career didn’t take off in Nashville like I’d hoped it would. This lovely young lady here is Sophie, she’s my brother-in-law’s grandma, which makes her my nieces great grandma. She grew up on a farm so she’s got all kinds of knowledge around surviving without being able to Google. This is my sister Susan and her two daughters Nellie and Mary. My brother-in-law here is Bill. He was never in the service but did serve as a bouncer in the town outside of a large military base during his younger days.”

  As Paul finished talking everyone started shaking hands and exchanging the standard empty pleasantries you’d exchange at a cocktail party. The main difference being that in the old world of cocktail party platitudes all you had to worry about was sticking your foot in your mouth and embarrassing yourself. Nowadays, you were trying to be nice while wondering if they were going to open fire when you turned your back so they could steal your three bags of canned food and half a jug of diesel. The thought may even have crossed my mind for us to pirate them out of those jugs of diesel and the other supplies they had in the truck beds. I let my sense of decency rule the day though.

  Bill walked over and shook my hand. He was the size of a professional football player and his grip was ridiculous. I pretended to shake my hand around to restore circulation after we shook and he laughed. I smiled at him and in a serious tone of voice told him, “You know steroids will make your private parts fall off, right?”

  He laughed and asked if that was what had happened to me. I could really get to like this guy.

  Introductions completed, I asked if they had any plans. Paul mentioned they had some tents and had been spending most nights off the road in tents sleeping in fields. Sleeping in something a Zombie could rip through and start chomping on me before I had a chance to fully wake up sounded horrifying but I just nodded my head. Bill said there was a rest area about another five miles up the road that we could settle into for the night if that worked for us. After a quick parlay with Ann, Reeves and Ginny we agreed to meet them there.

  Paul was stoked we were going to all hang out for the night.

  “It will be great to hear your story and find out how you got to where you are and what your plans are now. We can tell you what we’ve seen and figured out so far to. Hopefully we can help one another out.”

  Sounded good to me. We mounted up and followed them towards the rest stop.

  Entry 13: First Impressions

  As we pulled into the parking lot behind our new comrades I noticed Ann was cracking a smile. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

  “I was just thinking that a few hours ago these guys were literally shooting at us to drive us away from them and now we’re following them into a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. I just think that’s all really weird. Also, isn’t it really weird how nonchalant we’ve all gotten about being shot at? In the old days, I’d have spent the rest of the month filling out the paperwork for what happened this morning. Now, Paul said it like it was a joke and we all just laughed along with him. Life’s gotten really cheap.”

  Reeves piped in from the back seat.

  “If we hear banjo music turn this thing around and get us the hell out of here fast!”

  Ginny was too young to get the reference. Reeves started explaining it to her by mostly snorting out the infamous ‘Squeal like a pig’ line and laughing like a maniac.

  Ann sighed. “Ok guys. Clear heads. What’s the plan here? We going to try and play nice with these people? I’m not getting the ‘they’re going to rape us and steal all our stuff vibe’ so I think we’re ok with extending a little trust. They did shoot at us though?”

  I thought about it. I did want to get intel out of these guys. We were absolutely flying blind right now. I really wanted them to make good on their promise and hook us up with some diesel. Sure, they’d taken some shots at us when they weren’t sure who we were but I wasn’t really holding that against them.

  “Ok. We don’t trust them but we are going to have a conversation with them. Everyone look casual but I want weapons ready to go. We don’t drink anything they offer us. I don’t want to wake up naked with all of our stuff gone. We stay spread out a bit. Don’t bunch up together where it would be easy for them to cover us all with a single gun. We don’t sleep here. We stay for a few hours and then we’re out. Play it by ear but let’s make sure we play it safe.”

  Ann was looking at me strangely. “That’s pretty thorough. How’d you come up with all of that?”

  I smiled, probably looking guilty as hell, “I was just thinking through how I’d counter all the stuff that I had been thinking we could do to pirate their supplies.”

  “Don’t feel bad boss. I was thinking the same thing. I saw a couple cases of Coors and one of those giant boxes of pop tarts in the back of the blue truck. Plus, you had that eye patch on forever which probably impacted your psyche and made you think you’re an Edward teach type of guy.”

  The two pickup trucks had pulled in behind the rest stop bathrooms in the truck parking lot. Ann followed them around and pulled into a spot a few spots over from them. We all got out of the car except for Ginny. I had her go up in the turret and get on the big gun. Reeves had shown her the mechanics of it so she’d at least be able to spray some lead in the general direction of any bad guys. More than likely she’d just pop off shots with her AK or .22 while she was up there if she saw any wandering Zombies.

  Paul and crew walked over, dragging a bunch of folding chairs and pulling a big cooler. After a few trips, back and forth to the trucks and with us sharing out some of our supplies as well we had a pretty decent feast going. Reeves was laid back in a lawn chair with a warm Coors, a can of spray cheese, and some wild berry pop tarts. So much for staying sober and trying to avoid getting ‘roofied’.

  Ann and I were on the same wavelength as we both grabbed a warm can of Coors and kicked back on the opposite side of Reeves. At least Ginny was staying sober and drinking out of a big plastic jug of unsweet tea she had found somewhere. Once we were all settled in, Paul looked over at me expectantly.

  Intel and a story. I looked back at him and then over at the gas tanks they had I the back of the truck. He smiled and went over and grabbed a big one and brought it over to us. Then he went and got another.

  “That ought to get you down the road a few more miles. Sorry again about shooting at you and all. Now, I say we swap stories and see what useful intel we can pull out of each other. I’m hoping we can help each other out somehow. Although I don’t really see a way yet.”

  Since he’d come through on the fuel I went ahead and sat back down. I had the theme song from Gilligan’s Island rolling arounds in my head and couldn’t shake it. I decided just to go with it.

  “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip. Something. Something. Something… Anyway, sorry about that, it was in my head and I had to let it out. We’ve been tracking our journey and the stories of people we meet in my phone on this diary app I have. I call it the ‘Zournal’ because I’m creative like that. I spend plenty of time typing away on here since I can’t really spend all my spare time watching the Simpsons anymore. There’s no usable signal anymore but Ann has pointed out that I’ve still found a way to be an ‘I-Hole’. If everyone has plenty of squeeze cheese and Coors I can run through the highlights of it with you all? Then we can pass around a big bottle of tums.”

  Everybody nodded and leaned forward. There was no HBO anymore so this was as close to entertainment as they were going to get.

  Entry 14: The Ballad of Paul

  I didn’t finish reading it that night. We got about three hours into it and everybody was pretty zonked. It didn’t help that skimming it turned out not to be an option since when I tried doing that inevitably someone started asking questions that made me go back and read everything all over again so I ended up just reading everything out loud. Everyo
ne besides me was also fairly buzzed towards the end of it. I was reading so I didn’t have time to down the Coors as heroically as everyone else was doing.

  I’d only been into the story about an hour when I had heard snores coming from Reeves. I looked over and his mouth was wide open and he was covered in pop tart crumbs and empty Coors cans. Super classy.

  Sophie had dropped out next.

  When everyone looked like they were starting to nod off Paul called an end to it. He had looked me in the eye. Swigged the last bit of Coors light out of the can he was holding.

  “Steve, are you guys going to kill us, take our stuff, and violate our corpses.”

  “Paul, I can guarantee you I have no plans on violating you. Dead or alive.”

  “Ok. Cool. Then let’s just agree to trust one another because I think we’re all drunk anyway. It may just be the beer talking but I feel like we can trust you guys. Since it’s still early in this relationship and it is the end of times and all I say we both post up guards for the rest of the night and everyone else crash and we continue story time in the morning. Preferably after breaking into our fresh water and aspirin stash.”

  So much for us not spending the night with them or trusting strangers. Hell, the first thing we’d all done was accept a beer from them and guzzle it down. I honestly don’t even get why we made plans about half the time. I should have known better than to trust Reeves around a case of warm beer. Ann though? She wasn’t even a beer drinker. Not much of a drinker at all based on the fact I only saw three cans by her and the third one was still pretty full. She handed me the third one as I held out my hand to help her up. She needed the help. A lot.

  I deposited her in the back of the Hummer without being puked on. I chalked that up as a win. I decided Reeves could sleep right where he was at. I looked up at a bored Ginny who was still standing over watch. She yawned and smiled down at me.

  “You ever going to get rid of the poop pan intro to your life’s story?”

  “Just keeping it real. Like fo shizzle and all that other stuff the cool kids are saying. You can crash now. I’ll take the next watch. I’m assuming it is going to last all night since everyone else had a little too much liquid hangover.”

  Ginny didn’t need to be told twice. She scurried down the turret and curled up in the front seat of the Hummer. I nodded over at Nellie, she was the youngest sister of theirs, she nodded back. It looked like she had ended up with guard duty by virtue of being the only one sober on that side of the camp. Weird how times had changed enough that meeting other people who did not want to kill you was cause for a ‘kegger’.

  Nellie had a fancy hunting rifle with an expensive looking scope on it and was setup in the back of the pickup truck. She looked like she knew what she was doing so I continued my patrol of the rest stop before finding a nice post on top of a picnic table area to cover everything. I sat there until the sky started to lighten up. As the sky turned blue I went and woke up Reeves. He was not happy. I told him it was his turn to stand guard. He tried to punch me. I laughed and asked him if he wanted some Vienna Sausages since the goop they were packed in had hardened into wiener jelly. He didn’t puke but he seemed to consider it for a second.

  He finally stood up. Gave me a spiteful look and headed towards the edge of camp to relieve himself before finding a good position to stand guard from. I went and shoved Ann over in the backseat so I could squeeze in beside her. She whined about there not being enough room for both of us for a while but finally just gave up and went back to sleep once she figured out I didn’t care. I was dead tired but I still tried to stay awake as long as I could. Who knew the next time I’d be able to just lay still in sort of safety holding the woman I loved.

  The woman I loved woke me up about five hours later. I loved her slightly less for that, looking out the window showed me everyone had assembled another processed food feast and were waiting for me to show up and entertain them again. I crawled out of the back seat and said my good mornings to everyone then went back to it. It was late afternoon when we wrapped up.

  “Ok then.” Paul looked around at us. “You guys have been through a lot. You’re still standing though. Not just standing either, you’re really going to go and try to do some damage to the Koreans? You think you can actually pull something off? Against an entire army?”

  There really wasn’t a way for us to answer that. No way to put our outrage and need for vengeance into words. I just nodded.

  Paul shrugged.

  “Ok. Well we wish you the best of luck. Our plan was to head towards a more southern climate so we wouldn’t be facing these harsh winters anymore. Hoping we could find a large warehouse or something like that to spend some time in. I’m rethinking the heading south part now based on you letting us know about the Koreans push in the South.”

  Paul kept on talking when none of us broke in to say anything.

  “Alright, well since you shared your story with us and it was chock full of useful intel I’ll try and talk you through some of the things we’ve discovered while we’ve bounced around. We’ve been more sedentary than you have for most of this mess. Only recently making the decision to head out from our homestead...”

  The Blausters had a residence on Red Rock Lake up in Idaho they went to every chance they got. They’d been there when the world went crazy with Zombies. Paul had asked Bill if he wanted to come up and join him so they could go hunting and the rest of the family could hang out at the house and enjoy the lake. Bill had come up with his wife, Susan, and there two kids, Nellie and Mary. At the last minute, Sophie had asked to go with them as well so they’d made some room for her to come with them. They had also brought their baby brother with them. Lenny was nine years old.

  Paul and Bill had gone hunting in the morning. Sitting in a deer stand on the edge of the lake drinking luke warm coffee from a thermos and hoping for a deer to come wandering in before they froze in the positons they were sitting in. They’d spiked the coffee but they were still in danger of freezing their asses off.

  Susan had been putting the dishes away from the dinner they had made the night before. She was standing at the sink looking out the window to keep an eye on Lenny. Lenny was running around in the front yard playing with a model airplane. Susan saw two people running down the street towards their house. They lived in a cul-de-sac so this was pretty weird behavior. The people seemed to be wearing bathrobes which made it even weirder. Susan put the plate to the side that she had been trying to scrape melted cheese off of and went to the front door to get a better look.

  At the front door, she saw the two runners had gotten a lot closer. She saw their faces were pulled back in grimaces and they looked like they’d spilled barbeque sauce all over the fronts of their robes. The man’s robe was untied and his stomach protruded obscenely from it as he ran. Susan yelled for Lenny to come inside while she ran back to the kitchen and pressed her finger down on the bio metrically locked gun safe they had in the cabinet. The lock popped and she pulled the S&W revolver out and ran back to the front door. Grabbing the gun had only taken about twenty seconds.

  Lenny was not running towards the house. He was standing in the yard staring at the people who were almost on top of him. Susan screamed for him to get in the house. He started to turn and Susan threw the door open to run to him. Before she could get to him, the man with the open robe jumped at Lenny and started sinking his teeth into the young boy’s head. Susan watched in horror as Lenny filled the air with his pitiful screams as the man ripped Lenny’s ear off his head with a dangling sheet of flesh still attached to it.

  Susan found herself almost on top of the monstrosities. With no hesitation, she shot the man and the woman at point blank range and reached down to help her son. The boy was a mess. He was bleeding all over his head and passed out from shock. His ear was missing as was half the skin on that side of his head. He was missing a big patch of hair and some skin on the top of his head where the man had first tried to bite him. Susan picked him up
and carried him inside. She was screaming for someone to help her.

  Nellie flung the front door all the way open so Susan could rush through it. She was yelling for Nellie to call 911. Susan grabbed a bunch of towels and brought them over. They started trying to wrap Lenny’s head to stop as much of the blood flow as they could. The nine-year-old boy who was normally so full of life and so annoying was now just a small frail shape lying on the couch. Mary yelled out from the kitchen that 911 was busy but she’d keep trying.

  Thinking fast, Susan had Nellie help her carry Lenny out to the Pathfinder in the garage. They fussed around with him for a few minutes to get him laid out properly. Nellie got in the back with Lenny and Mary jumped in the passenger seat while Susan struggled to shove the key in correctly and get the car started. They pulled out into the cul-de-sac and turned to go towards the main road. Susan was trying to look in the back seat so did not see the man running straight at the front of the car until Mary screamed for her to watch out. Susan snapped her attention back to the road and then yanked the steering wheel to the side to avoid the man. She had a second to consider why the man was running in the middle of the street with no clothes on.