Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth

by R. S. Merritt

  She had told us she really had no idea what to do other than keep people away from the fire and call the fire department to deal with it. Still, she had been around it more than the rest of us so we were all betting that experience would translate itself into a solid reaction when confronted with fire if it happened. It happened, Thomas and I only heard about it later but up front the ash changed from just being floating white dust to the occasional burning embers. Sparks and smoke started drifting in through Reeves busted open window. The smoke sucked but the sparks really sucked.

  Ann had them pour water over some spare blankets and pillow cases that were up front and they wrapped those around their heads. Ginny went from watching for Zombies to being the ‘spark guard’ after a large burning leaf looking thing landed on Reeves head, causing him a lot of pain and everyone else a sphincter tightening few minutes as he swerved all over the road with his hair on fire. Ginny had a towel they soaked with a couple bottles of water and she was throwing that all over the place as they all tried to breathe. Visibility was gone.

  Reeves was rolling forward at about five miles per hour into the thick smoke. The windshield wipers had pretty much had it at this point. As they continued forward the murkiness to the right side of the road started lightening up with a fierce red glow. Ann kept a careful watch, deciding that as long as the red glow was just on one side of them they should continue forward. If the red glow got on both sides of them, it would be time to turn around. The map showed that they were passing a large lake that would probably provide them with shelter from the fire if they needed it.

  They kept inching forward. Reeves had his pistol in his lap. They’d decided at this point, with the visibility factor, if a zombie decided to poke its head through the driver side window he’d just send it straight to hell courtesy of a bullet to the forehead. Ginny had said she’d shoot it but Reeves said he felt a bit more comfortable doing it himself. As slow as they were moving no one was super worried about Reeves having to come to a stop, shoot the theoretical Zombie, and continue moving forward.

  Ann was more concerned with the smoke inhalation than Zombies at this point. Courtesy of the broken window they were all sucking in a lot of smoke. The air was hot enough to be uncomfortable to breathe in. A large gust of wind blew in a burst of embers and smoke. Ginny was throwing water at every orange glow she saw. Reeves was cussing, in between a harsh dry cough. Ann was fixated on looking straight ahead to see how the fire looked. She was thinking about calling it and telling Reeves to try and turn this parade around but wasn’t sure they’d have much luck going backwards at this point.

  Another stiff hot burst of air flooded the cab with smoke and embers. All of them were pouring water over themselves trying to cool down. Steam was coming off their faces and clothes. Ann was having issues breathing. She could only take short breaths as anything more than that felt like it was searing her lungs. Reeves had a set look on his face as he kept them moving forward. They’d either make it through this at this point or die trying.

  We made it through. Otherwise this Zournal would be a puddle of plastic in our big yellow Penske sarcophagus. It was close though.

  Ann didn’t remember making it out. Neither did Reeves. Ginny ended up being the one who drove us out of it. She attributed it to her being the one in charge of the water bottles up front so she had been pouring them over herself and the other and taking long drinks and keeping her head as low as she could. Reeves had been sitting right by the open window with the smoke and embers pouring in straight through the window into his lungs. They both came to with sweet, crisp air pouring in through the windows. The cab smelled like the smoking room at an airport mixed with the stench of a wet cat.

  In the back, Thomas and I just sat there wondering if we were going to die or not. The door was secured from the outside so we couldn’t get out even if we wanted to. We could kind of tell what was going on by how warm the inside of the storage area was getting but other than that not a lot of discomfort for us. The smell of smoke and increasing temperature the only clues we had that the people up front were probably having a bad day. Our lives depended on their fortitude and I wouldn’t want any different.

  No telling how many Zombies perished in that blaze. Similar to watching them tumble into gator infested waters when they were in pursuit of us, their complete disregard for their own lives was their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. They couldn’t perish fast enough as far as I was concerned.

  The truck stopped, a minute later there were three loud bangs on the back door, followed by the door rolling up. Ginny stood there looking at us. The left side of her face was bright red. She was covered in ash and mud. Soaked from dumping water all over herself. Her eyes were red and she looked ready to pass out. She got the back of the truck up and I helped her crawl in. We laid her down and got her some water then went to check on Reeves and Ann.

  My heart was pounding in my chest and I was sweating fear. I sprinted to the cab and ripped the passenger side door open. Reeves was spread out across the middle seat. Ann was slumped down into the foot area. Both were covered with soaking wet blankets. The left side of Reeves face was already starting to blister up. Neither one of them were moving. Thomas was awkwardly climbing in through the driver side door.

  “Is she ok? Is she alive? What do we do?” Thomas was close to panic. I was freaking out to. I realized we’d left Ginny passed out in the back of the open truck by herself.

  “I think they’re both breathing. I’ll deal with this. Go guard Ginny. Yell if you need me.”

  I started working Ann out of the truck. It was a steep drop to the ground. I held her like a baby in my arms. Freaked out by how light she was. How could someone so important to me and my life have such a small physical presence. It scared me. How easy I could lose her, or any of them. I heard Reeves coughing behind me. I cautiously carried Ann down the side of the truck then looked back around at Reeves. He was still spread out on the seat under the water soaked covers. Coated in mud and with half his face coated I angry looking blisters. Oh, god, I needed Ann to help me deal with all of this. I didn’t know what I was doing.

  I carried Ann around to the back of the truck. Thomas was in the truck making sure Ginny was comfortable and trying to get her to drink some more water. He helped me get Ann situated on a mat we had picked up from somewhere. I ran back along the brake down lane to check on Reeves. He was sitting up. Holding his pistol and looking around. I said his name loudly to make sure he knew I wasn’t a Zombie.

  I looked up at his blistered face.

  “Hey man, does your face hurt?”

  He slowly nodded. Throat too damaged from smoke inhalation to talk.

  “Yeah, it’s killing me.”

  He smiled and pretended to shoot me. His cracked and bloody lips causing him pain, even just smiling looked painful. I decided he was the probably the worse off. Ann was passed out but she didn’t look even half as bad as Reeves did. I handed him a bottle of water that I hurriedly crushed up some Vicodin and Amoxicillin into. He drank it down, wincing at every swallow. I decided to keep him up in the cab with me and blast him with AC.

  I climbed up and carefully threw out all the ash and mud covered blankets and covers. The cab was a complete mess still, but no time to deal with that. I needed to get everyone situated and get this truck moving again before Zombies started showing up. In our current state, I highly doubted our ability to fight them off without some casualties.

  Thomas and I had gone from the ones being taken care of to the ones providing the care in a very short period of time. Him and I were both still far from a hundred percent. I was trying to be as careful as I could because throwing out my back now would be bad. Possibly fatal, if I couldn’t get us moving and find somewhere safe for us to try and rest up.

  Ginny had pulled us over on the side of I-26. I assumed she had driven us as far from the fire as she thought she safely could without passing out. The air still smelled like smoke but it was nowhere near
as bad as the hell we had driven through. Looking back that way, I saw large plumes of smoke from the fires. Parts where white and parts were black depending on what was burning. There was a steady wind blowing towards the fires which made me optimistic that the fires may not follow us.

  I jogged back to the back and checked in on Thomas. Ann and Ginny were both asleep. I told him to try and get them some pain killers and antibiotics and keep handing them water bottles every time they woke up. Also, put water on Ginny’s burnt skin if he could. I started to shut the back of the truck and he asked if we could just leave it open.

  “It kind of freaked me out earlier when we thought we may die locked up in the back of this truck.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that. Plus, airing out the back of the truck would be good for Ann and Ginny. I had Thomas hand me some bedding and more water bottles for the cab then we worked on tying the back of the truck so it was up a little bit. It would probably bang around and be annoying but I’d want it the same way if I had to ride in the back again.

  I carried the bedding and water back to the cab and got Reeves situated as best as I could. I glanced down at the gas gauge and saw we were sitting at half a tank still after our last top off. We’d been trying to fill it up from the barrel every time we took a break since getting the barrel down off the truck was a pain in the ass. We never knew when we might get in a situation where stopping wasn’t an option.

  Not able to think of anything else to do. Body overflowing with worry and anxiety over Reeves and Ann. I put the big yellow truck in drive and headed West on I-26.

  Entry 23: The Walking Wounded

  I drove until we were getting pretty close to Spartanburg. I did not want to try and beat our way through a major metropolitan area with most of my team laid out. We were getting into the Fall now and the leaves may change color but I doubted any early blizzards were going to come sweeping in. I had been driving for a few hours and had expected Reeves to have at least poked his head up to look around by now. He’d just stayed laid out across the bench seat. His raspy breathing only broken up by intermittent coughing and moans of pain.

  I needed to find everyone a nice, safe bed to sleep in for a couple of weeks. Everyone, including me, needed a break. Our bodies were all falling apart on us. I didn’t have any real hope that my parents had survived all of this. The closer we got the dumber I felt for making this our objective. Between snow and fires I may be taking everyone to the worse possible place to try and survive. I went ahead and got off on the next exit to check it out.

  There was a large travel stop. Driving by slowly, I could see the windows had been broken out of it and I assumed at this point it had already been looted. Experience indicated we would still be able to find supplies in there but all the good, easy stuff, would be gone. I drove right past it. One thing I would have loved to do, would have been pull in and top off the tanks right out of one of the pumps. I was not looking forward to dragging the barrel down the ramp, hooking up the motor, pumping the diesel into the fuel tank, then dragging the barrel back up the ramp. At this point, the barrel would be a lot lighter but that was depressing as well. I guess we would be siphoning diesel out of the tractor trailers scattered in the truck stop parking lots pretty soon. Might actually be more plentiful than regular gas.

  I drove past the travel stop and turned right on the small county road intersecting 221. I was looking for an out of the way farmhouse or mansion or something like that. Somewhere that would have some supplies locked away in it and be big enough for all of us. I wanted it out of the way so we did not need to worry about people or Zombies. I drove down the country road for a while until I saw a gated private road leading into the woods. I pulled over and got out. Walking around to the back of the truck I checked in on Ann and Ginny. Thomas told me there had not been any noticeable change. Ginny had woken up a few times but Ann had not yet.

  I got Thomas to get me a set of the bolt cutters and used those to cut through the lock on the gate blocking us from the private road. The fact that the gate had a lock on it had me pretty optimistic that this may be the place we need. I hoped so because I could really use a bed.

  I got back in the Penske and drove us up the long dirt road. The drive was worth it. At the end of the road was some rich dudes summer home. A big ass house with an Olympic sized pool beside it. Complete with slides and stables. Rich people had such awesome lives.

  The pool was a nasty green swamp since it had not been kept up. The stables were overgrown. I walked into them, AK at the ready, and there was nothing in any of the stalls except for some leathered horse corpses in three of them. The guy in charge of the stables must have died somewhere else and left the horses to starve to death in their stalls.

  I walked out of the stables and over towards the house, swinging by the truck to make sure everyone was still Ok there. Thomas had gotten out of the truck and was pacing back and forth behind it with his pistol in his hand, ready for use. I told him I was going to go check out the house and to whistle if he needed me. I headed towards the front door.

  It was locked, of course. I hated to break it down because I was hoping we could stay here and we’d need a front door. I went for a stroll around the house. Trying doors and windows as I passed them. There was a large privacy fence in the back going around a portion of the yard. I walked along it until I came to a gate. It was locked with a padlock. Finally, a lock I could pick with the huge bolt cutters I was lugging along with me.

  I cut through the lock and set the cutters down on the ground against the fence. I picked my sword up and opened the fence. Inside was a smaller pool and a hot tub. This must be the party pool section. I walked past the pool and covered hot tub and halfheartedly tried the large sliding glass door. Damned if it didn’t slide right open. I walked into the house.

  Poking around in one of the living rooms, I found a dead Zombie laid out on the couch. I poked it with my sword to make sure it was dead and the damned thing opened its eyes and lunged off the couch at me. I jumped back and beat at it with my sword as it thrashed around in the blankets it had gotten caught up in lunging at me. The Zombie kicked powerfully against the ground, propelling itself right into my legs. I pulled the sword up to stab straight down as the Zombie grabbed one of my legs and pulled it hard enough to knock me on the ground.

  I cracked my head against the floor and wound up looking straight into the insane eyes of the Zombie laying right beside me. A large man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. My mind immediately labeled him as the stable hand who’d left the horses to die when he came in here for an eight-month snooze. Just my luck to be the catalyst for him to regain consciousness. His arm snaked out and grabbed me by the hair and started pulling me towards his mouth. I reached for my Kabar. Which I’d lost recently on some other Zombies arm when it fell out of the truck.

  I grabbed my pistol and started beating the Zombie in the face and head with the pistol grip. The skull made a crunching, sucking noise and his head dented in the place I had been beating on. Blood was seeping out of his head and forming a big puddle that the side of my head was submerged in. I reached up and untangled my hair from the Zombies Kung Fu grip. I rolled out of the blood and sat up. Coming face to face with Reeves, Ann, Thomas and Ginny. All of whom were staring at me wide eyed as blood dripped down the side of my face.

  “Can somebody grab me a towel? Maybe some hand sanitizer?” I realized I must look like the male version of Carrie after the pig blood stunt.

  “Dude.” That was all Reeves could come up with as he stared at me.

  Ann shook her head sadly, “Seriously, you were gone for like five minutes. How do you always manage to end up covered in blood?”

  I looked up at my merry band of misfits. All of us had long ago passed the numbers needed to be certified as serial killers, or war heroes depending on how you looked at it. All I care about now was they were standing. I hadn’t realized how worried I was. They all looked bemused at finding me like this.

  I
was deeply moved and started to get worried I might get emotional seeing them all alive and well. I got up as quick as I could, being careful not to slip in the pool of blood, and headed to find a bathroom where I planned on ruining multiple towels getting cleaned up.

  Entry 24: Let There Be Light

  Any romantic notions I had entertained about finally getting some alone time with Ann were quashed when I came out of the bathroom. In my absence, the group had settled in on all of us crashing in the monstrous master suite. Reeves was busy dragging in more mattresses when I came out of the bathroom. Did I mention the water worked? It was cold and smelled funny but damned if it didn’t shoot out of the nozzle when I turned on the shower.

  Reeves must have noticed my face fall when I saw him dragging in the mattress.

  “Not my idea boss.”