We had at least ninety-nine problems and the Zombies were just number one. Extra pints for catching that song reference. Not trying to digress a ton her but one of the things I wished I had done a lot more of before all this started was download more music. I was stuck for eternity with about seven songs on my phone. All of which I pretty much hated now.
Our main other problem was the current state of our group. Thomas was basically a walking coma patient. We had him hopped up on enough drugs that he didn’t seem cognizant of the fact that his arm was now bent at a crazy angle and just kind of dangling and spinning around from the elbow down. He wasn’t going anywhere very far, at least not very fast. I had tripled the screwed-up-ness of my ankle. When I looked down at it I could almost see the swelling pulsing to the beat of the shockwaves of pain it sent up my leg, through my bowels and into my brain. I could barely breath due to the rib injury and I think Thomas had poked me in my one good eye when I came up over the lip of the ditch. I also think I had taken too many pain killers because thinking was becoming a lot of work.
Luckily, Ginny and Ann took a break from bashing in Zombie brains to come up with a plan. Ann looked over at us and told us the plan. It was about the best we could probably do in the circumstances.
“Ok. Here’s the deal. Reeves, stay here and continue busting open Zombie skulls. Ginny is going to stay and watch your six while I walk Reeves and Thomas into the woods on the other side of the road. Once we have them both there Ginny will come and help me move them deeper into the woods. Once we’re deep enough, I’ll hit you on the Walkie to sprint to the woods and join us. I’m going to have Ginny come back and lay on the edge of the woods with her .22 and try to take out any that come up and see you running into the woods. That way you should be able to get in the woods and the rest who come up won’t know where we went. Sound like a plan?”
Reeves grunted in the affirmative while busily trying to break the fingers of a Zombie coming up the ladder to see if that was easier than breaking their heads open. Ginny had been nodding along the whole time. Thomas had no idea what was going on. I had heard about half of it, she really had talked for quite a while and I was seeing for myself how people get hooked on pain killers. The numbing of pain being a huge benefit. Then there was the buzz. We’d all gotten used to waking up to an antibiotic, pain killer vitamin breakfast at this point so I was wondering how long before we were all a bunch of drugged out freaks.
Ann started dragging me and Thomas towards the woods. More specifically, I leaned on her shoulder and hopped and she gently nudged Thomas along to keep him walking in the direction of the forest. Homeboy had already reached drugged out freak status between his vacant stare, drool, and the arm swinging around sickeningly. I took a peak back and saw Ginny and Reeves working out a system of beating the Zombies to death as they emerged. Luckily, the Zombies could climb the ladder but so far none of them were really great at it. Kind of like the skills of a toddler trying to go up a slide for the first time.
If the Zombies had been more skilled at ladder climbing, you probably would not be reading this as I’d probably be lining the insides of a Zombies intestines or wandering the world aimlessly for eternity looking for brains. Zombies can climb but they suck at it. Now I knew.
Ann took us into the woods for a while. Carefully walking Thomas around stuff that would hurt his arm more. Once she had decided we were far enough in she radioed Ginny and told her to move to the wood line, conceal, and fire on any Zombie that made it out before Reeves made it to the woods. Chiding her to be sure to stop once Reeves was in the woods. A few minutes later we heard the crack of the .22 firing. We had larger calibers but the noise would have travelled further increasing the danger of more Zombies coming at us. The .22 was a nice compromise. Ginny was our best shot after Reeves so it made sense for her to be taking these shots.
Ann looked over at me, “She was going to go for headshots to knee shots. Needs to put them down on the ground so the other Zombies don’t see them in the woods and start heading our way. I’m sick of running through woods. Headshots shouldn’t be too bad as they ‘re trying to climb out of there. Body shots will be useless on these things with a .22.”
I tried to make a flirty reply about body shots to Ann to lighten the mood a bit but it came out all weird and she just kind of stared at me trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about.
“Did you take extra pain killers?” She asked.
I tried to say nope but my lips weren’t really cooperating that well and it came out all weird sounding, even to me. Ann quickly started going through my pockets and taking my drugs away from me. I was evidently not to be trusted with them. She stared at one of the bottles for a minute while waiting for a response on the radio from either Reeves or Ginny. The shooting seemed to have died down.
“How many of these did you take?” She asked me.
I held up two fingers, to avoid the whole sounding like an eighty-year-old wino when I talked. My fingers didn’t seem to want to cooperate either. What the hell was wrong with me? Had my body gone to a rager and not invited the rest of me?
“These are muscle relaxers dumbass. Between these and the stuff I gave you no wonder you’re acting like an idiot. From now on you only take what I give you. You need to – “
Oh, good. The radio had cut her off in mid-nag.
“Ann, we’re coming in hot. I think some may be coming after us. Suggest we all go silent and just keep moving away from the road. We should catch up to you pretty quick.”
Thomas sat down, then lay down, then he put his hands under his head and went to sleep. We couldn’t get him to stand back up. We could hear Zombie yells starting to echo around in the forest. The cracks of the gun fire must have been drawing some from the surrounding area or they had gotten better at ladder climbing. I tried using my sword to lean on and it sank into the ground since it was the pointy end and I fell over when my weight went on my bad foot and landed on a log, right on my broken ribs.
I didn’t scream but I wasn’t moving anywhere anytime soon.
Entry 9: Laying down on the Job
Reeves and Ginny came busting through the weeds and ended up in the tiny clearing we were in. Both of them stared at us with a WTF expression on their faces. I tried to see it like they did and totally saw why. We were still being chased by a mob of pissed off Zombies. We had survived the ditch through some kind of crazy luck. We were pretty close to escaping and now they walked in on us with Thomas taking a nap and me laying on the ground holding my side with tears streaming out of my eyes. Ann was just standing in between us looking like she was going to lose her shit any second now.
It didn’t seem like we were going anywhere anytime soon. Reeves and Ginny conferred. Reeves looked like had just walked off the set of a military slasher film. He was covered, head to toe, in blood and other pieces and parts that had stuck to him. His eyes were dulled. Ann walked over to see what they were talking about and they all sat their whisper arguing about what to do next for about thirty seconds.
A twenty something woman, trailing a ratty, mold and blood covered robe open in the front, face full of broken veins, half her teeth missing, busted through the woods, took a flying leap and landed on Reeves back. Reeves tried to spin around and knock her off. Ginny was yelling for him to turn around so she could beat the woman with her bat. Meanwhile, the Zombie lady had worked her head up to chew on Reeves ear while he was throwing himself backwards on the ground and punching her in the face as hard as he could. The pain didn’t even phase the Zombie, who had evidently managed to get a good piece of ear or neck or something as she was chewing and swallowing while blood was everywhere.
I pulled out my knife and started crawling towards them, ignoring the pain this generated in my own body as much as possible. Ann and Ginny had pulled knives, dropped to their knees on either side of Reeves, and were busy stabbing the Zombie over and over again until she gave up and stopped moving. All of them were covered in blood. I saw Ann poking aro
und on Reeves neck until he scrambled to his feet.
“Oh good, my ear’s still there. Guess we’ll find out for sure now if the bite is still contagious. You know, I miss just having to worry about catching social disease from an exchange of bodily fluids. I do not want to go Blue.” Reeves was walking around wringing his hands and squirting sanitizer into his raw, bleeding wounds.
“You’ll be fine.” Ginny was saying to him. didn’t matter, he was freaking out. Who wouldn’t be?
Another Zombie came crashing into out clearing. This one looked to be about two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He grabbed Ann by the arm and wrenched her towards him, trying to bite at her exposed arm. She plunged the knife in her other hand into his eye. The knife went in about halfway and got caught on the eye socket. It was enough though. She had gotten him just right to throw him on the couch of everlasting sleep. He’d be picking turnips with a step ladder he would. Thomas was still napping away. Ginny was trying to get Ann out from under the big dead dude with the knife stuck in his eyeball. Reeves was freaked out, staring at his arm, probably checking to make sure it was not turning blue.
We needed to get out of there, but I didn’t think that was going to happen. I latched onto another plan.
Struggling to speak clearly, “Guys, let’s lay down, bury ourselves in leaves and pine straw, and wait until night-time to try and stumble out of here. Whoever buries everybody else should try and get up in a tree with a rifle, to watch and take care of the rest of us if something goes wrong. No more words.”
Must have seemed like a good plan, as the next thing I knew Ann kissed me then shoved a bunch of leaves and pine straw on top of me. We were going to be tick and chigger magnets but that was better than getting eaten by a gang of ghouls.
Entry 10: Ants In my Pants
An hour later I was cool with being eaten by Zombies. I itched everywhere. I felt stuff crawling on me everywhere. I hate spiders. I had managed to convince myself that big, nasty, hairy spiders were snooping around my privates. Then my mind went to Brown Recluse spiders. If they bite you it makes the skin around that area die. What if one of those little furry eight legged bastards managed to sneak in through my waist band and get in through my holy tightly whiteys?
I was a nervous wreck by the time Ann brushed the junk off me and helped me out of the pile of spiders and poison ivy she had left me in. It had finally started getting dark and her and Ginny had not seen anything come through in a while. Thomas was still asleep in his pile of compost. Reeves came out of his pile scratching himself like crazy. Ginny and Ann had taken over watch in the trees and told us a few Zombies had wandered around and one had actually stepped on Thomas but they had just mostly kept on going. They had not had not had to risk making any noise by killing them.
Ann and I pulled Thomas out of the compost. He was still mostly out of it.
“What did you give him?” I asked Ann.
“Everything I could find. His arm is – “Ann started to cry and I held her. I had no idea what to do with Thomas. His arm was spinning around like the whole bone had gone missing in the middle. He needed a doctor and what he had was us. We could maybe do a cast but would that even help?
We started emptying out anything we thought may help. I took out my phone and confirmed it still worked. Turning on the flashlight and shining it down as Ann and Ginny worked on trying to secure Thomas’s arm using the rope and tape and extra clothes we had come up with. Thomas occasionally gurgled and groaned in pain. We had given him a crazy cocktail of antibiotics and pain medicine. All on an empty stomach, so he was pretty much wasted.
Ann finally looked up at me. Worry was etched in the lines in her forehead. She had EMT training but this was beyond her. We had secured his arm as well as we could with what we had but Thomas needed more attention. Unfortunately, the days of X-Rays and copays and getting your cast signed were behind us. Now what he had to look forward to was either death or a some kind of arm deformity. On the plus side, he had four people with him right now who had his back until their last breaths. I made sure Ann knew that and made a mental note to remind Thomas of it once he was conscious.
Reeves had been busy as well. He had been chopping limbs off trees and tying stuff together. He presented me with a cane he had made from a tree limb to help me “walk my gimpy fat ass without any one having to carry me.” He had also gotten about halfway through making a stretcher for Thomas before the rest of us figured out what he was doing, determined it was a good idea, and joined in on it. Once complete, we rolled Thomas onto it and were ready to roll. Or, we were ready to drag Thomas while I limped along.
We headed out. At this point, I doubted even Reeves knew what direction we were moving in. Motion was life though. That was a saying we had all adopted and seriously believed in.
Our motion was pretty lame. The stretcher Reeves had put together kept getting stuck in the thick swampy underbrush we were trying to navigate. I was having all kinds of issues trying to hobble forward with my messed-up ankle. The cane was helping me support my weight but required careful deliberation on where to set it down to avoid it getting stuck. We hobbled forward. Like a line of senior citizens in Vegas, last bit of social security checks shoved into slot machines, headed towards the complimentary buffet. We sloughed on.
The normal noises of the forest surrounded us. The screams of the Zombies had died off for the time being. Gritting my teeth from the pain, I tried to think of a way for us to get out of this misery. The vision of sitting in a car immediately popped into my mind. Motion without having to wince with every step, anticipating the pain of setting my foot down. How to find a neighborhood though? I had no idea how far we were from any sort of neighborhood. The best I could think of was to start angling back towards where the road should be. The road is where cars live.
“Yo Reeves.”
“What up Tiny Tim?”
Ignoring his gibe at me for using the crutch, “You think you could angle us towards a road so we could get some clear walking and maybe find a car?”
“I don’t see why not. I assume the Zombies have settled down a bit by now. I could really use a change of clothes. Zombie blood smells like ass.”
As good as his word, Reeves immediately angled us towards the road. I thought it was a bit sharper of a turn but trusted Reeves to provide the best path. We trudged along until we finally came to the road. Or, at least, a road.
Once we hit the road, our speed increased appreciatively. Ginny, Ann, and Reeves were able to drag Thomas much more quickly. I was able to “hop my gimp ass” a lot more quickly as well. The knowledge there was going to consistently be concrete where I plunged the end of my cane gave me the confidence to move along much more quickly. Playing Russian Roulette in the dark in the woods with random depressions and holes when I leaned on the cane had gotten old really quick.
We did not see any Zombies out on the road. Of course, we didn’t see anything else either since it was as dark as the inside of a cave bats ass. We listened. This was becoming more of a useful skill every day. The world of yesterday had been one of machines and crowds and noise. The world of today is one of silence and stillness. You did not want to be anywhere near a crowd of today’s people unless you have a death wish. Assuming there were any ‘crowds’ of people remaining out there. Five to ten person groups seem to be the norm now. Anything bigger than that eventually inviting a group of hungry Zombies to come wandering along and ruin your day.
We didn’t dare turn on a light. That would essentially be announcing our presence to the world and we most certainly did not want to do that. We started walking down the road. Hopefully, Reeves was leading us away from the big crowd of Zombies we had gotten stirred up earlier. I had no clue which way we were going and SIRI had stopped being useful months ago. If someone were able to see us they would have observed a group that looked like they had crawled out of a foxhole after a grenade went off in it.
Thomas was still out of it. Every time we stopped for a break, Ann and Gi
nny worked hard to get him to drink water and make sure he was bandaged and bound as tight as they could get him. I was limping along in my own little world. Feeling like I’d played nude rugby against a team of Rhinos. Everything on me hurt. Reeves, Ginny, and Ann were doing great from an Apocalypse perspective. Reeves seemed to be maintaining his humanity after having a good chunk of his skin ripped off him by that Kamikaze Zombie that had tagged him. He now joined the club of people in our group missing chunks of their bodies. I think Thomas was the only one of us who hadn’t been bitten by something at this point. If he’d stop breaking his arm every five seconds he might actually survive long enough to have to learn how to shave.
We were moving as quietly as a group of beat to hell people dragging a randomly moaning kid on a makeshift stretcher in the darkness through a bunch of stopped cars and abandoned garbage can move. Luckily, Zombies do not have any sort of Superman style night vision or anything. There hearing isn’t a ton better than anyone else’s either. There is just a lot of them wandering around and with the aforementioned quiet of today’s world you don’t need super hearing to make out a group of people wandering along. We didn’t talk unless necessary. Going on the theory that just because Zombies heard a noise they might just think it was other zombies.
Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth Page 6
