Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow

by Merritt, R. S.

  The Zombie body got yanked off my face when I was pulled under the garage door. I sat up as fast as I could and changed the clips in my pistol. Reeves let go of the garage and fell on his ass. He had been the only one holding it up while Ann and Ginny had yanked me backwards though the door. The door dropped down about a foot but there was still probably about eight to ten inches of clearance. Zombies were already trying to force their bodies through the narrow gap. Ginny and Ann split up and walked along the door shooting any of them that looked like they were making any kind of progress in actually getting under the door.

  It was only a matter of time though. Thousands of Zombies were going to be trying to force their way through that door and they would get in. Even if it had not been jammed before there was now no way for us to shut it with all the Zombie bodies crammed in it. I struggled to my feet. Reeves was up as well.

  “Go to hand weapons!” I yelled. I figured we were going to need our bullets soon enough. All of a sudden, the heavy ass pockets full of clips I carried around felt depressingly light. I had lost my metal bar running out of the Hummer and just had a couple of knives so I started going around and hacking at any body parts that got stuck through the crack. It was messy and dangerous work and we were losing. The bodies that had started stuck in the crack had been pushed so hard from behind that they were now extending well into the garage. We had to wade through body parts and an ever-expanding puddle of body goop to get close enough to the garage door to actually stab the new ones trying to come in. This was neither sustainable nor sanitary.

  The next time I got close to Ginny I yelled at her to go check out behind us and figure out where we could fall back to. It took a few tries to convey the message but she finally got it. She disappeared to our rear to go check the place out. I was really hoping the Zombies did not discover another way in as then we’d be dead meat in no time.

  I brought the Kabar down hard on top of the skull of a blue skinned kid about ten years old who had come in under the gap fast and hard.

  Entry 41: Chutes and Ladders

  I was covered in gore, exhausted and we were starting to lose. I looked up from wrenching my Kabar out of a Zombies spine and saw Ann looked exhausted. Her normally immaculate clothes were covered in all kinds of grossness. Reeves looked similar but that was par for the course. The only thing holding back the flood of Zombies through the gap now was the corpses of their compatriots.

  The Zombie bodies were pushed back about ten feet from the door already. The new ones pushing their way through would come through half the time with their backs ripped off and parts of the backs of their skulls showing where they had been pressured through the gap by the mass behind them. We’d give them a love tap or a stab and they’d stop wriggling and we’d move to the next one. I could barely move my arms. The others couldn’t be doing much better. The Zombies weren’t slowing down though. If anything, more of them were trying to force their way through and the door itself was starting to bow from the pressure on it.

  Something poked me in the shoulder and I spun around with the knife raised over my head. Ready to bring it down and kill whatever was threatening us. It was Ginny. She pointed back behind us and I saw a ladder going up into a bunch of scaffolding. There were all kinds of catwalks and bridges and stuff up there. It didn’t look like a hospitable environment for the clumsy Zombies. If nothing else it would be a lot easier for us to defend. I just didn’t know about getting painted into a corner. If there were no way out though I didn’t think Ginny would have pointed us that way. She’d been gone a good while so had thrown some thought into the selection.

  How to disengage? It was taking all three of us right now to keep the Zombies at bay. Also, how were we going to carry the dog up the ladder. Daisy was currently standing behind everybody barking her head off. We were going to need to use up some ammo. I pulled out my pistol and started putting rounds through the Zombies coming through the gap. I walked the line and pointed Reeves and Ann towards the ladder. Ginny was already on the first cat walk and waving at them. When I pointed it out to Reeves I also pointed at Daisy. He nodded and went and picked her up like a big furry baby.

  I planned on giving them a couple of minutes head start to get up the catwalk. Once they got up there, one of them should whip out a rifle and cover my retreat. Or, as Chesty would have said, my attacking in a different direction. I went down the line one more time, emptying my clip into the bodies squirming through. When the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber I took that as my cue to make a run for it. I turned around and started running for the ladder. It was about fifty yards away. The open floor was lit from above by some sort of skylights or something.

  I hadn’t really thought about it until now as we’d been kind of busy but why was I able to see? It should have been dark as a bats butthole up in this place but instead I could clearly see a ladder almost fifty yards away. I could see that Ann and Ginny were standing on the catwalk with Ginny ready to provide covering fire for me and Ann helping Reeves get a very shaky Daisy onto the cat walk.

  I decided just to be happy I could see and not worry about the source of the light at this point in time. I heard Ginny start taking shots so that meant the Zombies were through and would be hot on my ass in no time flat. I threw myself at the ladder so hard I think I bent it. I know I bounced my face off a rung and that hurt like a son of a bitch. It felt like I had managed to break my own nose. Again.

  I started going up that ladder like a monkey on crack. Forgotten was the fact that I could barely move my arms and legs anymore. I told my legs and arms they needed to stow that bullshit and move. My body needed to be drug up this ladder as rapidly as possible. I was thinking Zombies couldn’t climb ladders so I should be safe. I got to the top and Reeves and Ann helped me up onto the catwalk. Ginny was signaling for us to hurry up and follow her. I wanted to tell her we were good to take a breather since Zombies couldn’t climb ladders when I noticed Reeves was busy shooting the Zombies who were climbing up the ladder.

  So much for that. Reeves had a long pole in his hand. It had once been the shovel we used to dig through snow. He’d been whacking Zombies hard enough now where the end of it was missing. He started waiting for them to get closer to the top and just whack them with the pole to knock them off. That way he could save ammo. The first Zombie up the ladder was a wiry woman who grabbed onto the wooden shaft and tried to use it to climb up and grab Reeves. He dropped the pole and the woman went backwards down to the concrete floor that was rapidly filling up with Zombies.

  Having lost his primary weapon Reeves pulled out his pistol and started just shooting them in the head as they got near the top of the ladder. I took a quick look to see if we could knock the ladder off the catwalk. It was welded on though so that wasn’t going to happen. Ginny was prodding us all to move on down the catwalk. We left Reeves to shoot the Zombies off the ladder and followed Ginny. I noticed the big windows around the top of the factory. The catwalk we were on lead towards an office space in the top right corner of the building.

  Ginny ran and kicked the office door. She bounced off of it and said a very unladylike word. Ann and I both stopped what we were doing to stare at her. Reeves came pounding down the catwalk towards us. He stopped and looked at us all staring at Ginny. Who was blushing.

  Ginny yelled to breakdown the door. Reeves and I both kicked out at the door at the same time and it went flying open from the pressure of the two boots hitting it at the same time. We rushed into a large office area with a few desks in it and a large window covering almost an entire wall. There was another door leading into another office in the corner. Assuming that was for the shift supervisor or something. I ran over to the window and looked out it. There was about a twenty foot drop to an empty parking lot below.

  Reeves and Ann were busy slamming the door shut to the office space and slinging desks and anything else they could find in front of it. I went to help them. Within about ten seconds the Zombies started pounding on the door. Then the
y were pounding on the walls. They’d be in this room in no time and we were starting to run low on ammo.

  Entry 42: Rock and A Hard Place

  We were trapped like rats. I looked at Ginny. She was fiddling around with the supervisor office door and turned around and caught my eye when she got it opened. I was trying to figure out what the play was when she pointed her AK-47 at the large windows lining the wall and lit them up. It was loud in that enclosed space. Momentarily eclipsing the screaming of the Zombies trying to pound their way in.

  Glass went flying the twenty feet down to the parking lot below. I kept on staring at her. Way too far for us to jump. Best case we break our legs and the Zombies jump down and eat us. That also happened to be the worst case. It just was the case, so WTF?

  Ginny ran over and yelled for us to go in the office and give her our grenades. I tossed her the two fragmentation grenades I had in my jacket pocket and the flashbang I had in one of my cargo pants pocket. We all ran into the office and Ginny slammed and locked the door. I had no idea why she bothered since that door would hold them back for like two seconds once they figured out we were in here. Ginny then turned and put some shots through the windows in this smaller office as well. She evidently couldn’t be bothered to just go and open the damn windows.

  Then she started tossing the grenades out into the empty parking lot. She threw both of the frags and we heard them explode. She must have gotten one near something flammable because we heard the whoosh of something going up in smoke. She started running around the room and gathering everyone else’s grenades too. Reeves and I handed her everything we had with no clue what she was doing. There was no way we were getting down in that parking lot so why blow it up?

  Ann must have found the decoder ring because she stated slinging stuff down into the parking lot as well. Starting with a couple of smoke grenades she had. Then her and Ginny seemed to be sitting there waiting for something. They eventually heard it because they started flinging flash bangs out the window. Then Ginny turned to us and made a shushing gesture with her finger. I found that to be odd considering the huge amount of noise she had just made. I went ahead and went with it though. Going so far as to hold Daisy’s muzzle to keep her from growling and barking the whole time.

  We heard the Zombies trashing the main office space. We heard a ton of screaming Zombies going through there. None of them started beating on the door to the office we were sitting in though. Ginny stayed by the window and then threw a final flash bang into the parking lot below. We heard a steady smacking noise that was similar to the noise of a waterfall. I carefully walked over to where Ginny was. Daisy came with me, my hand on her muzzle the whole time warning her to keep quiet.

  I sat and stared out the window. Awed by Ginny’s ability to think this far ahead. The Zombies were coming into the outer office and then running and jumping out the window towards the outdoor stimuli. I knew not all of them would go lemming and make the leap of death but a large percentage of them were doing so. If we sat here and stayed quiet most of them may run through the distribution center and jump through the open window. We just needed to stay quiet and keep the dog quiet and we should be good.

  I gave Ginny a thumb up and a big grin. She went and got a piece of paper. We all watched curiously as she wrote furiously on the paper. She handed it to Ann with a sheepish grin. Ann smiled at her and gave her a hug then handed me the piece of paper.

  ‘This seems to be working out ok but honestly I thought there would be a fire escape or something up here so we could get down. This plan we’re doing right now is kind of on the fly. I doubt they all run and jump out the window since we’re out of noisemakers. If a large portion of them move around from the other side of the warehouse though we may be able to figure out a way to sneak back and get our Hummer and get out of here. For now, I say we just stay quiet for a while unless you can think of a way to cause more noise and havoc outside.’

  I handed the note to Reeves and ruffled up Ginny’s hair to let her know I thought she was a little genius. Then I walked back over to the window to keep watching the waterfall of flesh striking the unforgiving lake of concrete below. Only, a lot of them were starting to survive the fall as the quantity of broken bodies built up below. Some were still dying but quite a few of them were hitting a drift of broken bodies that was two to three corpses deep by now. This helped them to hop up and run away after the fall.

  The Zombies were starting to come through at a lower rate now that the initial rush was over. In thinking about it they would need to climb the ladder and run down the cat walk then come through the one door to get in that outside office. The problem with that is they might lose interest before a large enough portion of them ran through the warehouse. The dead and broken ones laying on the ground below were not a huge percentage of the total Zombies we were facing here. We needed to increase the throughput in order to get enough of them through that we could reclaim the Hummer and get the hell out of here.

  My hand was starting to hurt from holding Daisy’s mouth shut. I was trying to do it in a way that would allow her to still breathe. I may not be a card-carrying member of PETA but I try not to be needlessly cruel either. Plus, Daisy was more like a big furry kid to us than a dog. I idly wandered if throwing her out the window and having the Zombies chase her around would work. No way was I throwing her out the window but the idea got me thinking. I kept looking into the parking lot. On the far side, there was a nice beamer parked next to an administrative looking building.

  If we could put a bullet into that car and if the battery in the car was still alive the car alarm going off might do the trick. That was two ‘if’s’ and a might. Not the kind of statistics I felt like risking our lives on but we’d based plans on way worse before. I wrote the plan down on paper and handed it to Ann. She shook her head ‘no’ and mimed shooting a gun, making a loud noise, and the door being beaten down and us being eaten alive by Zombies. I took the paper back and wrote down a question asking her if she had a better idea. She shrugged and wrote down to keep thinking about it but for now let’s just sit here and be happy to be alive for a little longer. I waggled my eyebrows at here and she took the paper back and wrote down ‘not THAT happy!’

  The car alarm idea having been shot down I began feeling around in my pockets and digging through my pack seeing if I had anything we could use to make noise. I got excited when I found an extra detonator in one of my numerous pockets. I knew I still had some C-4 in a Ziploc bag in my pocket but it had been useless without the detonator. Id’ been holding back some in the raid on the airport in Colorado Springs. I thought I had used the last two detonators on the earth moving equipment but this was a nice surprise.

  I held it up and Reeves eyes lit up. He had some C-4 left over in his pack but had not had a detonator. I handed him what I had and he started wadding it all together. I hoped we had enough to blow a hole in the wall below. I put that thought on paper and was handed back the paper saying that if the Zombies can go one way through a hole then they can certainly come back in through it as well. That made sense, we’d need to do something to keep them moving in the direction we wanted. Which was away from us and where we wanted to go.

  The waterfall had turned into a trickle as one or two Zombies per minute jumped out, hit the pile of bodies below, scrambled to their feet and walked around looking confused. We sat around and tried to come up with a plan but basically it was kind of boiling down to trying to blow a hole in the wall below with the C-4 and hoping all the Zombies surged through it and away from the Hummer on the other side of the warehouse. If that happened we’d just have to climb down and run to the Hummer and drive away from all this hassle.

  Reeves and I passed some paper back and forth and worked it out that to be sure we blew a hole through the wall we needed to put the charge on the wall below. We couldn’t just fling it and hope it worked. The problem with that being that we couldn’t get down without doing what the Zombies were doing. While it was working for most
of the Zombies, the thought of doing the Nestle plunge into a bunch of dead bodies was not real appealing to any of us. It really only worked out well for about half the Zombies we saw doing it. A lot of them walked, or limped, away with obviously broken body parts from the fall. Some of them disappeared into the bodies and never came back up.

  We quietly searched the office we were in. I was hoping for some rope. Maybe some rappelling gear or a giant bungee cord. What we found was printer toner and assorted other useless crap. I knew Reeves was thinking the same thing I was as far as taking that leap of faith and setting the charges then trying to meet everyone on the other side. It was a suicide mission though and since I didn’t see it having a huge chance of success it didn’t seem like something to throw any bodies life away on.

  My main concern with just flinging the C-4 down below was that it would attract all the Zombies over, most of them would not figure out how to climb the ladder and they would be stuck in the warehouse which is exactly where we did not want them at. I didn’t want to risk being seen but we needed some more information to figure out this puzzle. I walked over to the windows and stuck my head out so I could look in both directions pretty easily.