Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow

by Merritt, R. S.

  It was way too crowded in the trailer. There were supplies and crap shoved into it which we were all trying to balance on top of. Reeves was dead weight at the moment. I checked and he still had a pulse and it seemed like he was breathing but otherwise he was out. I had almost no room in the trailer and was hanging on to the metal arm connecting us to the axle on the back of the four-wheeler to keep from being flung off. Ann went around a turn too fast and I flew off.

  The gods had an argument while I was in midair and could not decide if I should hit my head on a tree or a rock. I landed safely between a tree and a rock while they were still trying to decide. Divine procrastination was my saving grace. I rolled into the woods a bit then stood up and started jogging down the trail after Ann. Behind me, I heard the screaming of the Zombies getting louder as they saw food up ahead. I sprinted around the corner and saw the trailer waiting for me about twenty feet up the trail. Zombies started pushing through the woods between me and the trailer and Ginny and Ann opened up fire to hold them back.

  I didn’t want to accidentally shoot either Ginny or Ann so I started running through the Zombies who made it through the fire Ann and Ginny were laying down to cover me. As I ran into Zombies who were still standing, I would put the gun right up to the Zombie and pull the trigger a couple of times then push the Zombie away from me as hard as I could. That method seemed to be working and had the benefit of me not sending random shots towards Ann.

  Ann and Ginny had not carefully considered this scenario. Neither one will admit it, but one of them managed to shoot the side of my neck and the top of my left shoulder. At the time, I thought it was a Zombie biting me. I spun around and sent a few rounds into the woods behind me as I ran but did not see anything back there which could have bitten me. I figured out one of them had probably shot me as I climbed on the seat and wrapped my arms around Ann. My blood started dripping all over her. No worries, chics dig scars. Not sure if that holds as true if the ‘chic’ is the one who gave you the scar in the first place. I really didn’t care anyway, I was alive for another few minutes and that was all you could really hope for.

  Entry 31: All Dogs go to Heaven

  Have you ever been to Jamaica? Or some other foreign place where driving a like a sane person is frowned upon? A place where you white knuckle your way around curves as the driver goes too fast, beeps his horn constantly and drinks a beer he insists is legal in his country while driving. There may also be the pungent smell of a certain medicinal herb he uses to keep his ‘joint’ pain away. Ann was channeling those guys with the way she was whipping us around corners and along the trail. I honestly had my eyes closed half the time she was driving. It really was that horrifying.

  The second time Ginny flew out of the trailer and almost died Ann decided to start driving at a reduced rate of speed. We should have gained a lot of ground on the Zombies by then anyway. It was starting to get dark enough that we could not see where we were going. Ann pulled over and we sat there in the silence for about five minutes with all of us just listening. We could hear moans and yells in the distance but nothing seemed ominously close or moving in this particular direction.

  The Zombies would bed down at night after they couldn’t find anything else to eat. When they woke up in the morning they would hopefully have forgotten about the meals on wheels ahead of them on the trail and just stay lost in the woods behind us. Reeves chose to regain consciousness somewhere in that quiet time and started asking for water. Ginny handed him a bottle of it as he sat up and gingerly tried opening and drinking it.

  He must have known he was going to be whining like a baby about the pain he was in for the next hour. He needed the bottle of water to wet his throat so he would not have to stop talking. I swear every time he exhaled for the next thirty or so minutes he complained about something. I tried to tell him that but he just went off on saying my mama hadn’t complained…

  I gave up on shutting Reeves up as Ann went ahead and stopped the motor on the ATV. We couldn’t see crap anyway so driving through a forest full of Zombies on a noisy machine seemed like a bad idea. We could have turned on the headlights but that always seemed to attract the Zombies even quicker. I chose to take a minute and enjoy the fact that Ann was no longer trying to throw us all over the trail at a high rate of speed. Ginny chose to ruin my moment of relaxation by reminding us the Zombies would probably still be heading this way.

  “Ok.” I looked around in the dim light at everyone. “I say we go off the trail about a hundred yards and dig in for the night and try to get some sleep. We can set watches and hope the Zombies lose interest before wandering into us. I don’t see how wandering around the forest at night is going to help us too much.”

  We grabbed as much stuff off the trailer as we thought we could use. This was made easier as we’d lost a good deal of stuff thanks to Ann driving like a crazy person. I chose to keep that bit of intel to myself instead of saying it out loud and getting stuck curling up by myself in the weeds tonight.

  We hiked into the woods and found a small clearing around a large oak tree. Ok, I have no idea if it was an oak tree or not. It was a big tree and there were acorns on the ground. I’m like seventy percent sure Oak trees make acorns. We put out the few blankets and little bit of sleeping gear we had and all settled in for a long, cold night. I drew first watch, then it was Ann, then it was Ginny into the morning who would have the pleasure of waking us all up. Reeves was being given the night off since he’d managed to drive at full speed into a giant boulder head first and gotten all concussed and stuff. Ann made a big deal about giving him a checkout by having him follow her pen light with his eyes and answer some math questions. Once she had decided he wasn’t going to die in his sleep she told him to get some sleep.

  “You think he’s going to be Ok?” I asked her as I leaned against what was probably an Oak tree.

  “I have no idea. I hope so. Wake me up when it’s my turn to stand watch or if we’re going to die.” With that she gave me a kiss and rolled away from me to fall quickly asleep. Soon it was just me staring out into the spooky woods in the freezing ass night. I was tired too. Every time I started to nod off though I would get up and do a couple of laps around our campsite to get me back to being awake. It took about a thousand years but finally it was time to wake up Ann to take my spot. She tried to get me to give her five more minutes but I told her I wasn’t a snooze button.

  She got up and wandered off to keep watch as I dropped down on the pad she had been laying on and pulled the sleeping bag over me. Everything was still warm from her body and the wadded-up shirt she was using as a pillow smelled like her perfume. I was asleep in no time.

  I woke up to pressure on my chest and a giant mouth coming towards me. I elbowed the mouth as hard as I could and rolled to the left while trying to untangle myself from the sleeping bag and pull my knife all at the same time. I heard Ann laughing so I asked her out loud what was so funny.

  “Do not kill anybody. Put your weapons down.” Ann said.

  “We come in peace.” A monotone voice came at me in a vaguely familiar way. I forgot about the knife and sat up quickly. I was quickly attacked again and I grabbed the attacker and gave her a hug and ruffled up the fur on her head while she viciously tried to lick the side of my face off.

  “Hey Gunny.” I stuck a hand out to him and he shook it. “So, glad to see you man. Is it just you or did anyone else make it out?”

  “Just me. I wouldn’t have made it if the dog hadn’t come back for me. When we started getting overrun I tossed out some grenades and tried to shoot in seven directions at once. I watched my men go down all around me. Daisy here came to me in the smoke and lead me through the woods to you guys. We’ve been walking forever it seems like. Did all of you make it out?”

  I shook my head no. “We all made it except for Tim. We rode past where he was buried under a pile of the Zombies.”

  Reeves and Ginny had woken up and come over. Reeves was busy feeding the dog a granola bar and
ruffling its fur. Ginny looked torn up and tired but she gave Gunny a big hug and kiss. She was probably thinking of a different Gunnery Sergeant. They definitely all shared some characteristics. One of which appeared to be survivability.

  We all sat down and let Daisy and Gunny drink water and eat out of the cache of supplies we had drug over here to our makeshift campsite. As the sun was coming up, we got into the discussion around what we needed to do now. Gunny was in a melancholy mood. His whole team had just died around him and he had survived. He had survivors guilt playing out. His team had been on an aircraft carrier until about three months ago when they off-loaded into Groton, Connecticut after transferring to a fast attack sub for the journey.

  In total, the team had only been back in country for about two months to do any actual Zombie fighting on the ground. Most of that time had been spent waiting for the plane that took them to Denver to try and slow down the Koreans out here and keep them from seizing too many of the air assets. They had taken out a lot of the aircraft the Koreans would have been interested in. That explained why the Koreans had come at us in commercial choppers instead of attack helicopters. There was still plenty to do in the region though. Which lead to Gunny outlining what he thought should be the next steps.

  “I say you come with me back to our HQ. We’ll go around a different way and avoid the horde. With my men gone we’re going to need you to help us carry out some operations. I’m thinking the CO will be more obliging now that we just lost all the marines he just received for this action.”

  Ginny looked at Gunny. “We’re not soldiers. How are we going to help?”

  Gunny smiled at her. “You guys have been surviving in enemy territory for way over a year now. When our position got overrun every marine there died but all four of you managed to make it out. You guys know how to survive and how to inflict damage. How many copters have you shot down and how many battles have you walked away from now? You’ve all been through the most intense boot camp ever invented and graduated with honors. I’d be proud to serve with you.”

  We all sat there for a second absorbing those words. It was one thing to think that we had come a long way and were pretty capable and another to hear the grizzled old warrior lay it out like that. I knew we’d turned into a force to be reckoned with and that we had the whole unit cohesion thing down but it bumped up the ego a bit to hear it said out loud. He was right too. We hadn’t made it this far by luck. We’d accumulated some pretty serious skills along the way.

  We talked it over for a little bit longer but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

  “Ok Gunny. Let’s get packed up and over to HQ and see what we can get done.”

  Entry 32: HQ, Take Two

  It was pretty amazing the stuff we’d picked up as veterans of the Zombie Apocalypse. The stuff we took for granted everyone understood were little nuggets of wisdom the Gunny kept prying out of us and absorbing. He started asking a ton of questions once I said we should avoid the four-wheelers. He wanted to know why.

  “The Zombies are attracted to engines and noise so unless you’re driving something big and fast enough where you don’t have to care about the Zombies then you’re better off walking. If you’re going to be headed pretty quick in a single direction then it’s ok. That’s what I was thinking with the four-wheelers. Now, I’m guessing you had taken that route before?”

  Gunny said they had taken the path multiple times.

  “Zombies seem to be able to figure out where you’re at so if you do the same thing over and over eventually they’ll be waiting for you there. Same with staying in one location too long. Eventually, the Zombies will show up. We always say that in this new normal, motion is life. Keep moving, stay quiet, and be merciless and you’ve got a good shot at living.”

  Gunny glowered a bit. “I should have known better. It didn’t occur to me the Zombies may figure out a way to ambush us. I’ve been thinking of them like they’re just wandering around with no sense of direction or any ability to think at all. I underestimated them and ended up getting my unit killed.”

  That led to us starting to talk to him about the things we’d seen and encountered. He held up his hand.

  “Ok. Woah. You guys have a ton of excellent intel we need to get from you. I want to hear your whole story and I’m sure the CO and everyone else will as well. We can take what you’ve learned and apply it so the rest of our guys have a better chance. For now, though, let’s go ahead and try to get back to where we need to be to rest up and get ready for the next mission.”

  Sounded like a plan to me. Gunny told us the approximate position of where the command center was. He gave us the warning again that once we were in we may not be allowed out until they no longer had to worry about the Koreans torturing us and finding out where the base was. Sounded fair. I figured if we wanted to leave we’d just sneak out when they weren’t looking anyway.

  We needed to go east for a few miles and the base was in a large abandoned looking warehouse beside a golf course. Gunny would need to go first as at some point we should be challenged and he would know how to respond. If we didn’t have the right response our welcome would be much less cordial. There were evidently several sniper’s stations on over watch and Gunny assured us we’d probably never see them until all of us were dead. If we were going to be headed deeper into the city and have to dodge a ton of Zombies we decided on going in stealth mode and walking the few miles versus trying to drive in. Gunny told us the base was relatively new and they had not felt the need to move it yet. That meant we did not want to roll up to it leading a parade of Zombies so we needed to be quiet.

  We also needed to be moving in the dark when the Zombies would be much less active. Since dawn had just broken and we’d all had a pretty horrible night’s sleep anyway I asked Gunny about any buildings nearby we could secure and spend the day sleeping in. He had a couple they had used as outposts in the past and even one that should have some rations and blankets and other supplies in it. The ‘other supplies’ should include a radio so he could let the base know what happened and that we would be coming in at night. That would hopefully help us avoid being shot in the head.

  We hiked across the park without having to kill any Zombies or do any crazy evasion. We ended up walking across an overgrown golf course towards the clubhouse. Gunny lead the way to the back of the main building and started working on a combination lock hanging off it. A few seconds later he slipped the lock off and opened the door, disappearing inside with his pistol out. Reeves, Ann and Ginny followed while I stayed outside by the door to cover the escape route and keep them from being snuck up on.

  A few minutes later Ann stuck her head out the door and told me it was all clear. I went inside and pulled the door shut behind me. I used the deadbolt on the top of the door to lock it from the inside. I turned around and saw that Reeves and Ginny were busy clearing the space while Gunny and Ann were shining there light on a couple of boxes in the corner. I walked over to see what was in the boxes.

  Ann turned around and seeing it was me reached out and held my hand while Gunny kept on cracking open boxes. There were cases of bottled water, a bunch of bandages and medical supplies, a box half full of cans of slim fast, and another one with a couple of .22 pistols and a whole bucket of .22 ammo. Gunny explained this was one of their locations they’d run to if the HQ got overrun. A .22 may not be the best weapon but it was a lot better than no weapon.

  Ann handed me a water and I took the cap off and started drinking it while continuing to look around. Light filtered in through the closed shutters enough to make out some details. We were standing in the gift shop portion of the club. I idly walked over to one of the stands and looked for my size shirt and pants. I found some nice clean socks too. I stripped down to my boxers and started pulling on the new clothes. I still had my shirt off when I heard Gunny.

  “Holy hell son! I thought your face was messed up pretty bad. You’re like one big continuous scar. How the hell are you still alive
?”

  I looked down at my torso and then back at Gunny.

  “Yeah, and you haven’t even seen my legs. You should see Ginny, she got bit by a shark.”

  Gunny laughed. “Yeah right. What happened with the round scars all over your chest?”

  “We ran into a bunch of convicts masquerading as soldiers and when we got in a fight with them I took a shotgun blast to the chest.”

  Gunny was looking at me like he was trying to figure out if I was pulling his leg or not. Ginny must have heard part of the conversation because she walked over modeling a pair of shorts from the Women’s section that showed off the very obvious shark bite scars on her leg. Gunny stared at her leg then at me.