The Pathfinder swerved right into a large green utility box on the other side of the sidewalk on the street. Susan had had been driving way too fast out of concern for Lenny so what could have been just a fender bender seemed to have smashed something important. Smoke was pouring out of the hood and when she stomped on the pedal she heard revving but nothing else happened. She played with the shifter for a second but it was locked in place. They had hit the pedestal hard enough to have the front seat air bags deploy. She had been punched in the face hard enough by the bag deploying to be dazed pretty good. Same with Mary.
Nellie was yelling something from the back seat. Susan was looking at the angry red marks on her arms where the air bag had burned her skin. When they deploy, airbags get hot enough to burn you. Susan heard a banging noise and looking to her left saw the fat guy who had been in the middle of the street banging on her window. The man’s eyes were red and leaking white pus down onto his cheeks. As Susan stared at him the man’s head exploded. She stared in shock through the blood and brains slowly leaving a trail as they slid down her window.
Bill appeared and opened her door. She heard Paul asking what the hell was going on from the backseat. Susan tried to tell Bill what had happened to Lenny but felt like most of it was coming out garbled. They heard more screaming coming from down the street towards the highway. Bill was trying to call 911 over and over again and not having any success at getting through. He was so busy trying to call 911, juggling his pistol, and trying to help Susan out of the car that it took him about a minute to figure out something was seriously wrong with Lenny.
Paul had pulled Lenny out of the car and was cradling him in his arms. Susan asked how he was as she unsteadily tried to walk over to him. Bill supported her as Paul said he was alive.
“Let’s get everybody back to the house and figure out what to do from there.” Paul took the lead and started jogging back towards there house. Bill followed with Mary and Susan both leaning on him while Nellie walked briskly beside them and kept throwing looks over her shoulder towards the screams and yells coming their way. They ran through the front yard, past the stiffening bodies of the two people Susan remembered she had shot earlier.
As soon as they got inside they started working on making Lenny comfortable. Susan was screaming that he needed a hospital. Bill tried to quiet her down but was not having a lot of success. Susan went to go pick up Lenny off the couch and take him to the car over everyone’s protests. She got over to the couch before Paul got in her face.
“Where the hell are you going to take him? We can’t make it out of the neighborhood. 911 is not working. If we got him to a hospital I have feeling they have a lot of stuff going on right now. Honey, we need to try and get him comfortable and bandage his head and try to get him some antibiotics. You think we can switch our focus to that? It’s the same thing they’d do at the hospital.”
Susan focused in on trying to take care of Lenny. Nellie and Mary both fussed over him while Bill stared and wrung his hands. He was watching his son bleed all over the couch and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Paul came over to him. Softly he told him they needed to get loaded up and ready to get out of this house. They needed to round up as much food and ammo as they could and get it loaded on the four wheelers. They had two of the camo four wheelers in the garage, along with one trailer they used to haul supplies in and dressed deer carcasses out.
Bill stared at Paul with panicked eyes.
“I hope I’m wrong Bill. I don’t think this is something that’s going to blow over quick though and we may need to get away from it all for a while. Maybe go out to the island house or something like that. I don’t think we’ve had to kill to survive for the last time today.”
Almost in answer to this statement they heard loud moaning out in the front yard. Bill went over and peeked out the curtain. It was their neighbor and his wife. Both of them were half dressed and sporting those hideous red eyes. One of them must have noticed him moving the curtains because they both started screaming and lunged for the big bay window he had peeked out of. They started hammering on it and the sound of cracking and breaking glass filled the living room. Nellie and Mary were screaming. Bill stood there with his arms by his side staring as his neighbors tried to drag their bodies through the jagged glass and into his living room. Paul walked over with a high caliber hunting rifle and put a round through each of them from a distance of about a foot. The sounds of the gunshots echoed through the neighborhood and more screams started up from all directions. Paul yelled for everyone to throw whatever they could find in the four-wheelers and get ready to leave.
Most of the weapons and camping gear and everything were near the garage so it was a quick process to get a bunch of that thrown in the trailer. There were spices and fresh water and that sort of thing at the cabin as well so Paul wasn’t too worried. They threw everything in and hit the button for the garage door to slide up. Paul stood by the door as it opened and picked off two more of the crazed maniacs charging his family. Bill had carried Lenny out and laid him in the trailer on some blankets. They backed everything out and drove to the trail leading into the woods. Off in the distance they heard the sound of automatic gunfire and police sirens and saw a large plume of dark smoke sketching itself across the blue sky.
Entry 15: SSDD
Paul stopped talking at that point in the story and looked over at Bill and Susan. We all knew what part he was stuck on. The inevitable must have happened with the boy. Bill nodded and Paul continued.
“You guys have been out here for a while but you must remember what it was like in the beginning. Based on what Steve read us, I know you have all had losses and I feel for all of them. That first day, we kept trying 911 and we finally got through. The dispatcher sounded a little crazy. She answered without any of the police, fire, or emergency talk they normally start off with. She basically just said that it was a Zombie invasion and if you got bit you were going to turn. Then she started laughing and hung up. So that was that. We tried to just assume it was just crazy talk but the proof was staring us in the face. That call probably saved our lives because we started keeping a watch on Lenny and restrained him. When he turned, we were able to send him to his rest without anyone else getting hurt.”
Paul stopped there. His eyes were full of tears. All of us stayed quiet out of respect. Ann had moved around and put an arm around Susan who was openly sobbing into her shoulder. Bill had moved protectively towards his family as well. We sat there until Paul was able to move on.
“That’s about it really. There was a nice couple of cabins out on the lake on one of the small islands out there. Fish camps basically. We took a boat out there and moved in. We’ve been living off the land for the last year or so. There are plenty of deer and fish. Not a lot of veggies but we took vitamins to keep from getting scurvy or any of that nonsense. Bill and I made a couple of scouting missions to town to grab other essentials over the year. We noticed the Zombies seemed to be thinning out so decided to risk heading South to find somewhere a bit warmer to spend the winters. We haven’t seen a ton of Zombies on the ride down here and this is the first time we’ve heard about the Koreans and all that. We were already debating turning around and going back and now I’m thinking that may be the best idea. You all would be welcome to join us?”
Ann looked up at me from where Susan was also looking at us hopefully. Ann shook her head slightly. I looked over at Reeves. He shrugged. Ginny also shook her head in the negative when I glanced up at her.
“Thanks for the offer Paul. I think we’re going to keep heading out on our original mission though. I agree it seems a bit impossible but we’ve already beat the hell out of the odds just in getting to where we are now. I do think the best thing for you guys would be to go back to that lake house though. It sounds pretty much like heaven to me and I’m not real sure you’d be able to make it much further south without having to fight.”
“In that case. Let’s not waste any more dayligh
t.”
Bill moved forward to shake my hand. I reached out for it and he took a swing at me.
We’d kind of been expecting this. The Hummer with the mounted machine gun and all the supplies and weapons we had shoved into it were an apocalyptic goldmine. They’d give any group a big advantage in surviving on the road. I pumped my legs hard and full on collided with Bills jaw with the part of my head I used to use to head butt soccer balls. I already had my Kabar in my hand and was swinging at him to follow up to the head strike. I was swinging with the grip side first to knock him out. He hadn’t pulled a gun on me so I felt this was fair.
My head butt had not done as much damage as I had hoped. He was dazed but not out of the fight. He barreled towards me and we both lost our feet and fell hard on the ground. We slid to within a foot of the Hummer and I was already squirming out from underneath him. He was busy elbowing me in the face which was really freaking painful. I borrowed a page from the Zombie street fighting manual and followed his elbow up and bit into his skin.
Biting him had way more impact than I had thought it would. Which was a good thing because he had been about to kick my ass big time. He was jumping around shaking his arm and yelling that I was a Zombie. Oh! That was funny.
I heard Ginny yell for him to get on his face. He looked like he was about to say something else. Then he looked around and wisely decided to get on his stomach. I got up and wiped the blood off my face. I scanned the parking lot and took stock of the situation. Paul was on his knees with blood on his face. Reeves was standing behind him with his pistol casually pointed at the back of Paul’s head. Ginny had everyone covered from up in the turret. Ann was standing over the three girls. Sophie was sitting on a bench with her face in her hands.
“Put them all in a row. On their knees.” I ordered.
Ann gave me a strange look but Reeves just started kicking people and telling them to do what they were told. Ginny kept the big barrel pointed right at them. Once they were all lined up I walked over to stand behind them.
“Whose brilliant idea was it to jump us?” I asked.
“Mine and Bills. Susan and the girls tried to talk us out of it. We didn’t even tell Sophie what was up” Paul said in a monotone voice. He sounded like had already accepted his fate.
I spit out some blood and asked Paul what they had been planning on doing with us after they took our stuff.
“Nothing. We were going to take your stuff and leave. No hard feelings really. We like you guys. We skipped some parts of our story though. This road can be rough and we need some advantages to win. There were more of us. Including my wife and sister. No offense, but you guys are wasting that Hummer with that big gun. Those Koreans are going to kill you. You’re basically already dead so I didn’t see much harm in taking your stuff. I just didn’t anticipate you guys being ready for us like you were.”
Paul looked around over his shoulder at me.
“That’s it. The whole deal. If I was you guys I’d probably kill us and leave us to rot or at least kill Bill and me then take our stuff and leave. I really hope you leave the girls with at least a truck though.”
Paul turned back around and sat there.
I looked over at Reeves and Ann. They both looked back at me. Letting me know it was my call. I looked up at Ginny.
“I don’t think we should kill them. There’s too many corpses laying around already. Hopefully they learned their lesson. I do think we now get to take all their stuff that we want. Let’s leave them with a truck and get out of here.”
“What if they follow us?” Reeves asked. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder the rest of our short lives. Safer to leave them to rot.”
“You guys are still going west to attack the big ass army of people who want to kill us all right?” Susan spoke up with a tremble perceptible in her voice.
“Yep.” I said. Wondering where she was going with that.
“I can promise we’re not really trying to get involved in all that mess. After everything that’s happened we’re going to take ourselves back to the lake house and live there for as long as we need to. You guys are still welcome. I’m so sorry these knuckleheads did this. They really thought they could take the Hummer without hurting you and then you’d join up with us. Most of their planning happened over a few more of those beers last night. I thought we’d talked them out of it. I swear to god if you let us go we will never try and chase you down. It’s not like we want to get our asses handed to us again.”
I thought about it. I pulled Ann over to the side, leaving Reeves and Ginny to keep guns on our hostages.
“I’m leaning towards letting them go. We take most of their stuff so it forces them to go scrounge up more supplies. That way even if they did want to chase us they would not be able to. We leave them with enough supplies to get them to somewhere they can get enough supplies to make it back to that lake they love so much.”
Ann smiled and gave me a kiss. “Works for me. We need to search them while they’re on their knees and then make them lay on their faces while we grab whatever supplies we want and then we leave.”
We walked back over to the line of kneeling hostages. Ann started frisking each of them. Other than knives and the pistol in its holster on Paul’s hip there was nothing else to be found that we hadn’t already taken off of them. We left them all their knives. Then we started taking the rest of the supplies we wanted and consolidating them into one of the trucks and the Hummer. We took all of the diesel and all of their firearms. We took most of their food and loaded all the water we could fit. Once we had everything we wanted shifted around to where we wanted it I addressed the miserable looking hostages one more time.
“The world sucks now. You were right to try and do whatever it took to save your family and give you an advantage. You were wrong the way you did it. I’m hoping you’re all better people than you’ve shown. That’s why we’re letting you live. We’re going north, then west. Do not let us see you following us or we will light you up. No questions asked. Understand?”
They all shook their heads in the affirmative and offered up thanks and other platitudes. I’m not sure Hallmark makes a ‘Sorry we tried to attack you and take your stuff and leave you to die in a Zombie wasteland but thanks for not killing us’ card. Whatever. The main thing was that we now had a pickup full of large canisters of diesel. I was sweaty and sore as hell from moving everything around so looking forward to a nice ride in the Hummer.
Ann and Ginny had volunteered to watch over the hostages, thus avoiding all of the hard-physical labor. Therefore, they got to drive now. Ginny was driving the pickup behind us. I was sitting in the backseat of the Hummer in case I needed to get up in the turret. Reeves was riding with Ginny because riding by yourself in this mess was kind of creepy. Paul and the rest of the Blausters were probably already on their way south to the fuel station to get restocked before heading back to that lake house with their tails between their legs.
Entry 16: Hell Bent for Leather
The scenery was boring. The drive was boring. You’d think being in constant fear for your life would be at least a little bit exciting. Truth is, it gets old. Like eating steak and ice cream for every meal would probably get old after a while. I know for a fact that I was getting sick of canned pasta and it was one of my favorite foods ever. Who doesn’t love Chef Boyardee?
Big bonus to being in constant fear of death. We could eat Chef Boyardee and candy bars for every meal and not stress about it. Even if we weren’t burning off the calories by constantly running for our lives there was also the fact that we didn’t expect to live long enough to develop any kind of heart disease. I even picked up a carton of Marlboros at a convenience store to revive a long dead bad habit. Ann squashed that one real fast by saying she’d never kiss me again.
The Zombies seemed to be banding together more and more now. We’d see an occasional one wandering around by itself but they were gathering into groups more often. Zombies in groups were way more
of an issue than Zombies in ones or twos. Zombies in ones or twos would only win if you got super careless or they got super lucky. Big difference between coming around a corner and there being a couple of Zombies you could take out pretty quickly and walking around a corner to have five hundred of the bastards staring at you.
Five hundred was a conservative number. Figuring a regular town had about thirty thousand people living in it based on the town I had been in when this all started. We’re talking the size towns where only the locals even know where it is or have ever heard of it. If only ten percent of the town had been turned into Zombies and were still wandering around that was still around three thousand Zombies. I was thinking the ten percent should be about right by this time.
If you started considering the staggering numbers of Zombies who could be pouring out of some of the larger cities you began to see how automatic weapons might not always be enough to see you through. For right now though, we seemed safe enough. I didn’t say I hated being bored. For the most part I was learning to enjoy being bored. Being bored beats the hell out of running for your life or hiding in a small closet while Zombies stream past your hiding spot. Being bored is way better than having teams of Seals coming at you with tear gas and assault rifles. I’ll take a boring drive through Arkansas any day.
Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow Page 8
