Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow

by Merritt, R. S.

  Her barking was not going to help us stay hidden for long. A minute later we all heard a helicopter coming our way. The helicopter stopped above the overpass and a spotlight started shining around. Tim had grabbed Daisy and was trying to get her to stop barking. The rest of us were holding our breaths and waiting to see what would happen. The spotlight worked its way around the road. Daisy was whimpering through Tim’s hand. I noticed something moving in the shadows popping up from the searchlights. It looked like the side of the overpass was crumbling.

  I watched as the side of the overpass turned into about a hundred Zombies who had been sleeping under the overpass. Awakened by the noise of the Hummer and chopper they were sitting up and looking around. They noticed us standing down there and the screaming began. Tim shoved Daisy back in the backseat and the rest of us jumped back in as well. I was sitting in the driver’s seat. The helicopter spotlight was still playing all around.

  “Go!” Yelled Reeves.

  “Yeah Steve, let’s get out of here!” Ann yelled in my other ear.

  My finger hovered over the switch to start the Hummer. Sweat rolled down my forehead. I didn’t start the Hummer. The Zombies reached us and started pounding on the armored vehicle. Bare hands were not going to do a lot of damage to a vehicle designed to withstand IEDs. Some of the Zombies had picked up rocks and were banging them on the Humvee. Still no big deal. I saw another Zombie walking our direction carrying a cinder block. That could be an issue on the windshield.

  The Zombie brought it down hard on the windshield and it bounced off into the crowd. The windshield had cracked though. Another hit and he’d be through. Ann yelled the helicopter was leaving. I looked up and saw that the spotlights had indeed gone away and we could hear the copter disappearing down the road over the roar of the Zombies. I flipped the Hummer on. The powerful engine roared to life. The Zombies went crazy.

  The Zombies were crawling all over the Hummer trying to get in. Banging on it with rocks and pieces of concrete and their bodies. I tapped the accelerator and we started moving forward. Reeves could not unlatch the turret access to get up and start shooting because the zombies were literally all over the Hummer. I could not see anything but the body parts and ragged clothes of Zombies trying to break in through the windshield. They were probably going to break through here shortly if we didn’t do something.

  With zero visibility and no idea if the Hummer could push through or not I went ahead and started pressing the accelerator down harder. We were moving forward. The Zombies were surging forward with us versus pushing us backwards. Or, just as many were pushing us backwards as were pushing us forwards, I had no idea of the physics behind all of this. Daisy was flipping out. We were going to need to Fabreeze the hell out of this Hummer if we made it out alive. Tim was shaking. He had been hanging out in a mansion the last year watching movies and choosing which tube of astronaut food to have for dinner every night. He was not used to being buried under a pile of monsters who wanted to rip you apart.

  The rest of us kind of were getting used to it. The constant fear we dealt with being on the road and being under attack all the time. We all had that thousand-yard stare they talk about in the movies about the Vietnam War. We’d all ‘been in the shit’. I kept the accelerator down and gradually started pressing it harder. The Zombies continued to run along with us. These appeared to be some of the smarter ones as they had some tiny bit of self-preservation instincts and didn’t just stand there and get ran over as the Hummer moved forward. That worked to our advantage because we didn’t end up with so many dead bodies being crushed under the Hummer that we ended up stuck on a pile of gross.

  The gradual acceleration thing worked. Pretty soon we just had the ones hanging onto the Hummer to worry about. Somebody needs to invent windshield wipers that can fling Zombies off your windshield. I sprayed the windshield wiper on them just for the hell of it. The bastards pulled off one of the wipers and bent the hell out of the other one. Great. I tried slamming on the brakes. No Zombies flew off but I did piss off everybody inside the Hummer. I probably should have warned them before I did it.

  “Guys. We got an issue. I can’t keep driving blind or we’re going to run into something. I can’t go too slow or the Zombies chasing us are going to catch up and we’ll have to get away all over again. Ideas?” I hoped to ask them for ideas would get them to forget about the sudden braking with no warning thing I had done.

  “Hey! How about you go real fast and slam on the brakes so we can all get bloody noses again!” Ginny chipped in.

  “Stop the car. We all jump out. Kill the Zombies on the car and then jump back in and keep going.” Reeves was waving his gun around to indicate he was down for the jump out and kill plan. It sounded like a pretty horrible plan. We’d executed on worse though. Take my slamming on the brakes thing for example.

  “Ok. On the count of three I’m going to hit the brakes again. Everybody get ready. Ann, Reeves and I are jumping out. You get ready to take my seat.”

  “Nope.” Ann disagreed. “This plan works better if we all jump out. I’m leaning towards hand weapons to so the Koreans don’t hear guns going off.”

  This was going to suck. I counted to ten. I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t get my door to open because a Zombie was hanging over it. Ginny was in the back trying to climb over Tim who did not think he should be part of this plan and definitely did not want to open his door. Ann got hers open and jumped out with a crowbar and a hatchet. Reeves rolled out of his side with a knife and a hatchet in his hands. I continued to struggle to open my door with the Zombie hanging over it. He must be stuck there or something. I rolled down the window and stabbed him in the stomach a few times.

  I was going to have a new nightmare. The flabby white stomach split open and internal parts were pouring through the window into my lap. The Zombie was reaching through trying to get at me even as his guts were spilling all over the place. I was covered in warm steaming stink. I puked. While I was puking another Zombie reached through the window and grabbed me and started trying to pull my arm out the window and bite me. I brought my knife around and into the arm of the Zombie and started sawing away. Damn Zombie had another arm and stuck that one through then stuck his head in the window. I shoved the knife into his skull through his eye socket. It finally fell away from the window.

  I looked over to check on Ann and Reeves. It looked like they were getting overwhelmed so I opened my door and started getting out to help. A screaming Zombie jumped for me from the side of the road and slammed into the door I was halfway out of. This caused the door to slam into my body and I fell out on the ground with the Zombie jumping on top of me. I got an arm behind me and around the things neck to keep it from biting me. Something wrenched the head out of my grip and torqued the hell out of my arm. I looked up and Tim was standing there with a baseball bat. Go Tim!

  A Zombie grabbed Tim and was wrestling him to the ground. Daisy appeared out of nowhere and went all Pit Bull on the Zombie. Ripped the things leg to shreds then started working on its neck when it fell on the ground. We were going to get overwhelmed if we stayed out of the Hummer much longer. The Zombies streaming along behind us must be able to run faster than I’d hoped they were going.

  “Back in the car!” I yelled. Then took my own order and jumped back in. Slamming the door behind me to block any more Zombies. A Zombie reached through the window I had forgot to roll back up and grabbed at me. My knife was gone. I fumbled around looking for another knife and couldn’t find one. Two loud booms in my ear and the Zombie went backwards with two new holes in its head. Then Ginny and her .22 pistol went to the other side of the car and started blasting away.

  Ann and Reeves were back in the car a second or two later. I’m sure they had some new bruises and had decided this plan sucked as much as I had thought it would. It had worked though. The Zombies on the windshield had gotten off to attack us so they were no longer an issue. We thought all the other ones had gotten off as well but were not comp
letely sure. No helicopters showed up as we barreled down the road with the headlights off. My arm was killing me and my neck hurt but what else was new. Ann passed around a bulk size bottle of Ibuprofen and everybody choked down a handful of those and kept on going.

  Entry 28: Mountains Suck

  I know a lot of people think the mountains are beautiful. I know a lot of people love the snow. Those people did not have to experience the mountains after the world had spent almost two years in a Zombie Apocalypse. Those people flew into the Denver airport and then took a rental car up the well salted and cleared roads to their resorts. They watched the sun rise over the mountains while sipping Kahlua laced hot chocolate in a hot tub outside their room. They weren’t driving on a road that you couldn’t actually see because it was covered in snow and rocks and leaves and crap. A road that you couldn’t actually see that was bordered by extremely steep drops into death. Don’t get me started on the snow.

  We made it into the mountains on a smaller road than we had originally planned to take. We’d talked about going on a major highway as it was more likely to still be passable. Instead, we chose a smaller road that joined into a major highway in the mountains. We spent an entire day going maybe twenty miles up that road before giving up and deciding we needed to turn around and try another route. That had been fun since we were driving along one of those aforementioned roads with the drops on the side that ended in a fiery death. That meant driving in reverse down a road we couldn’t see next to the cliff of death.

  We only had to drive backwards for about a mile before finding a place we felt safe enough to turn around in. Once turned around, we faced another complication in that it was starting to get dark. None of us really thought driving in the dark was a great idea. There were the cliffs to worry about and we also didn’t like giving away our position by shining our headlights. We figured the Koreans were probably still looking for us. Reeves pointed out we were probably safe up here, as they wouldn’t think we’d have been stupid enough to try this smaller road.

  We stopped in the middle of the road, turned up the heater, and everyone got as comfortable as possible in the Hummer and went to sleep after we passed around a bag of stale Doritos. I took the first watch and sat there marveling at how much the world had changed. It really was a miracle I was still alive to see it. Ann slid over closer to me and grabbed my hand.

  “Penny for your thoughts.” She whispered.

  “I feel like I’d be ripping you off. I’ll give them to you for free.” I kissed her hand. “I was just thinking the world has changed a lot in the last two years and so have we. We may actually have changed more than the world has now that I think about it. The earth has been here for some zillion years and will probably be here in one form or another for another zillion. We are a blip in that timeline. Especially since it looks like our time has run out. Like this road we’re on now, another year you won’t be able to tell there used to be a road here.”

  “Way too deep of thoughts. I was just thinking the stars out here are gorgeous.” Ann smiled, pulling my hand over and kissing it before snuggling against it and closing her eyes to fall asleep.

  The stars really were beautiful out here. I looked down at the beautiful woman drooling on my hand. My entire arm was going to fall asleep but there were some really nice highlights to this end of the world thing. You just had to enjoy them when they showed up.

  Entry 29: Through the Mountains, Take Two

  We drove down with the morning light and headed North towards the interstate that should take us over the mountains. The plan was to take the highway up to the beltway that runs around Denver and take that up to I-70- which we would take most of the way through the mountains. If I-70 was impassable then we’d have to either winter somewhere or head south to try and get through.

  We made it on the 470 to Bear Creek Lake Park. I remember because I was looking at the sing when I noticed something come flying out of the woods and hit the front right of the Hummer. I remember thinking that it looked like a rocket. The next second there was a loud bang and the front of the car went up in the air and we started to roll over before the car settled back down on the ground. I guess it was a rocket.

  My ears were ringing. My head was swimming. The Hummer was sunk down towards the front right so I assumed that’s where we had been hit. Ann looked knocked out. I hoped she was ok. I saw figures moving towards us out of the woods. I opened my door and got out. Yelling for Reeves to get in the turret. The dog was whining and barking like crazy from the backseat. Growling and snapping at Tim who looked confused as hell and was trying to sooth Daisy and open his door at the same time. Reeves was holding his arm and trying to get to the turret.

  I stood beside the Hummer and brought up the AK-47. I started to pull the trigger and Ginny yelled to stop! When had Ginny gotten out? I hesitated to pull the trigger and next thing I knew a very large man with camouflage paint was grabbing the AK-47 out of my hand and throwing me on the hood of the Hummer. I looked across the hood and saw Ginny had her hands up and was talking to two of the guys. They both had M-16s pointed at her. As she talked they nodded and the weapons dipped so they were pointing at the ground instead.

  Reeves and Tim were laid out across the hood beside me. I looked over at Reeves to see how he was doing.

  Reeves smiled real big, showing the blood covering his teeth from his busted lip. “How’s it going boss? Way to avoid that rocket!”

  I decided to ignore Reeves. Ginny had evidently convinced the guys that we were not Koreans or Zombies or whatever they thought we were. I felt the pressure on my back let me up and a gruff voice told me I could stand up. Easy for him to say. My head was still spinning like crazy. For a second, I wished it had made me nauseous enough so I could puke on the guy. That would teach him.

  I turned around to say hi and the guy shoved his gun in my stomach.

  “Where’d you get this Hummer?” He asked me.

  “Your momma.” Came the muffled response from Reeves who was still laid out across the hood.

  I thought about it. This guy seemed like American military. I decided to be honest, just for the hell of it. “Picked it from some Koreans we ran into on the way here. They won’t be needing it anymore. Is it still going to work or did you blow it up their soldier boy?”

  The man was not amused. “I’m a marine. Not a soldier.”

  “I knew I smelled something!”

  Ignoring Reeves, the Mainer continued. “We just took out a handful of Koreans in a convoy. They looked like they were looking for somebody. You the ones who got them all stirred up?”

  “Afraid so.” I said. “If you hadn’t blown up my ride we’d be able to work on knocking a few more of the dog eating sons of bitches out of the sky.”

  The Marine smiled. It made him look a lot more human. “Dog eating? Really? That’s the kind of shit you’ve come up with? Yeah man. We seriously fucked up your ride. I suggest you grab your gear and hump it out of here with us. We can give you a ride back to base then see what to do with you. You hang out here you’re going to get eaten by Zombies or shot by Koreans because we just made a whole lot of noise when we made your ride go boom. I’d assume they’re already on the way. I’ll have my guys help carry anything you need help with. We have some four-wheelers with carts down in the woods if we can get your stuff over there.”

  I looked in the direction he had pointed. There was a steep concrete culvert down to a drainage ditch before the woods started. While we were talking one of the Marines had already started running back in that direction. A second or two later the first of the four-wheelers pulled into view. I went and checked on Ann. She had woken up and was busy trying to figure out what had happened. I gave her the synopsis and helped her get out of the Hummer and told her to head for the woods.

  I started grabbing everything I could that looked useful. The Marines were pulling out all the ammo and weapons and lugging them towards the woods. Tim was trying to talk Daisy into getting out of the Hummer
. All Daisy wanted to do was stand on the floorboards and try to bite anyone that got close to her. At least she was doing a low scary growl instead of barking. Growls would attract less attention because they did not carry as far. One of the Marines tried to help Tim by reaching in and grabbing Daisy by the back of her neck.

  He cussed loudly and pulled back a hand with a big dog bite into it. He was bleeding all over himself. The guy cussed and pulled out his sidearm and aimed it at Daisy.

  Tim hit the Marine in the back of the head with a baseball bat. The Marines gun went off and the round went into the seat by Daisy. The guy stumbled against the car then turned around as Tim was swinging the bat at him again. The Marine deflected the bat into the Hummer and stepping forward he planted his foot hard into Tim’s crotch. Tim went down with a groan of pain and the Marine stood above him and aimed his pistol at Tim.

  I dropped all the crap I was carrying and fumbled around for my rifle. Before I could bring it into play a golden streak came out of the Hummer and collided with the Marines ass. The guy started screaming and spinning in a circle as Daisy appeared to be trying to rip off a sizeable chunk of the guys butt cheek. I got my rifle up and aimed at the Marine while yelling for Daisy to come to me. Daisy let go of the guys ass and trotted over to me with a big smile on her face.