Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth

by R. S. Merritt

  Slowing down to around five miles per hour, we approached the sharp turn onto the county road. Zombies were crawling up both sides of the cab. Ann was slinging a steady flow of lead going out her window. Stopping periodically to drop out a clip and slam in a new one. She also was handling reloads for me and covering me while I tried to drive through this chaos. She placed a handful of shots out of my window. I swear one of the bullets grazed my nose. She maintains a Zombie reached in and scratched my face but there’s a very straight chunk of skin missing off the bridge of my nose. I don’t remember a Zombie reaching through and grabbing my nose. I guess it’s possible to forget a Zombie grabbing your face. Either way, I’m alive because Ann decided to channel Annie Oakley’s spirit and became a lead slinging death dealer up in that cab.

  I made the turn without flipping us. We were leaving behind a trail of dead Zombies like some kind of macabre bread crumbs. The cab smelled like gun smoke instead of wood smoke now. My one good eye was red and full of tears from the acridness of it. My right ear was pretty much going to be useless for a while after all the gunshots going off in the tight confines of the cab. We were alive. I drove as fast as I dared to get on the Interstate, knowing Zombies were going to be converging from all around us towards the sounds of the gunfire. We made it up the on-ramp without the need to fire any more shots.

  Entry 29: Battle Scarred

  There were a few Zombies for a mile or two who had been attracted by the sound of the guns going off. They were easy enough to avoid. I really needed to do something about this driver side window though. It was creepy as hell driving around, never knowing if suddenly a Zombie was going to decide to pop up and grab you. I needed to ask if anyone knew how to weld. I vaguely remember melting some solder into a puddle in shop class but didn’t want to stake anyone’s life on my welding ability. I would have been afraid of losing man points by admitting that, but since I’ve gone toe to toe now on numerous occasions with large groups of insane cannibals and come out on top I feel like I no longer need to justify.

  I was almost positive it would be Ginny who would raise her hand and jam in a chew and get to welding. Maybe I could bake a pie or something for her while she worked.

  The land was getting way less flat as we rolled through the foothills of the Smokey Mountains. I recognized the landscape from years of family vacation road trips up to our cabin. I’d never driven it myself though. I’d also never driven a truck this big. I chose to err on the side of caution as we rolled through the hills. I looped around long, steep curves and drove at what I thought of as a very safe speed. Ann referred to my caution as “grandma driving”. I told her to stop being sexist.

  We wrapped around one particularly long curve coming around the end of it we saw the road had a line of cars across it. I started to slow down to figure out how to address it and Ann yelled to speed up and ram through it. Having no idea why she was telling me to ram through it, I went ahead and aimed for where the car’s front bumpers were kissing in the middle of the highway and floored the accelerator. I trusted Ann to the point where I had not even hesitated to floor it when she said too.

  That trust saved our lives. The truck took a while to accelerate but the engine had jerked us forward as I floored it. Bullets stitched along both sides of the cab, looking at them later we saw how close they had been to hitting us. In the moment, all I knew was we were taking rounds from both sides. Ann had her window down and was blasting away with the pistol, no way was she actually hitting anything. At least not on purpose. Hitting anything was not the point. Like most rounds fired in major conflicts over the last Century, the idea was to make the other guy think twice about sticking his head up to take a shot versus actually aiming to hit someone.

  We were hurdling down the slope towards the cars at roughly eighty miles per hour. The truck would not go any faster. I had the pedal on the floorboards so there must be a governor on the truck. A governor was great in normal times but they needed to add an option for Zombie Apocalypse Mad Max driving.

  We hit the cars. My face slammed into the steering wheel and I tasted blood. I felt the back of the truck swinging around and struggled to correct. Fighting the steering wheel as I tried to steer into the spin. I wasn’t even sure if that maneuver was applicable in this case but I had no other quaint sayings to go on so I rolled with that one. We were through the cars. Now we were hurdling towards the guardrail that was there to keep regular sized cars from flying over the side of the mountain. I lifted my foot off the accelerator and pressed down slowly on the brakes instead while turning the wheel and praying and cussing all at the same time. I had the same feeling you get when you go over the hump on one of those big wooden roller coasters. Scared, breathless, hoping I survived the next thirty seconds.

  We hit the guardrail with the back half of the truck and bounced off back into the main road. I continued firmly pressing on the brakes to slow us down. I heard Reeves hitting Ann up on the radio. I didn’t hear what he said but I did hear Ann.

  “Light them up!” I glanced over at her as she depressed the talk button, then I put my focus back on the road as she explained what she was going on about.

  “Reeves sees people chasing us on motorcycles. He wanted to know if that was the reason you were trying to kill all of them in the back and if he should open fire.”

  Ok. The light them up response was the exact right response to that question. I continued to decelerate, staring in my rearview mirror. Ann yelled out that one of them was pulling up to her window. I swung the big truck over in that direction, towards the guy on the motorcycle who was trying to figure out how to use his rifle and ride at the same time. He ended up braking to avoid me running into him. As he slowed down, the back of the truck passed him and I saw his chest get covered in a big red puff courtesy of one of our guys in the back.

  I shifted my focus to the road in front of us. Determined to keep us alive and moving in the right direction. We were getting closer to Spartanburg and there was now a lot more legit traffic stuck in the road, which I had to work around. Ann told me it looked like the pursuers had given up. Why had they attacked us in the first place?

  We had a big truck that did have some supplies in it, was that really worth risking a pitched battle over? I asked Ann what she thought.

  “I think people are starting to get desperate. The easy food is running out. People like the ones who just attacked us probably thought we would just roll over and let them take us. We also don’t know how many people are left up here. I was thinking once we get into the mountains and people are more spread out that may have left a lot more people unexposed than in the more populated parts of the country.”

  That made a lot of sense. However, it kind of screwed up my plan of being able to easily find food in the mountain regions to take up to the cabin. We kept moving past Spartanburg towards I-85. Once past that we should be hitting I-40 pretty soon. We’d take I-40 through the mountains, head towards Pigeon Forge. Once in Pigeon Forge, I was hoping my memory would kick in and get us to the road that lead up to our cabin. I knew it was behind a race track and one of those pancake breakfast places.

  Crack!

  The window suddenly had a hole in it. Someone was taking shots at us. I slammed on the brakes and yelled for Ann to get down. I belatedly felt sorry for everyone in the back of the truck as I felt the items in the back shifting around with the sudden deceleration.

  Another two holes appeared in the windshield. I opened the door and jumped out. I worked my way to the front of the truck and tried looking out to see if could spot who was shooting at us. There was the interstate in front of us and a couple of industrial looking buildings off to the right. The left side of the road was a cracked concrete field and old run down parking lot. I wasn’t dead yet, so I figured the shooter must not be able to see me. Would have been nice to have a better method of figuring that out.

  Ann poked her head out the driver’s side door. She was down on the floorboards. Her window had been shot out.
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  “Hey, you’re not dead!” She said, sounding pleased and surprised.

  “Not yet. What the hell do we do now?”

  “Well, they’re in front of us somewhere, let’s go to the back and see what Reeves and them think.”

  Ann slid out of the truck and we both went around to the back. Reeves, Thomas and Ginny had slid the back door up a little extra and were all sitting back in the shadows. Weapons trained outwards.

  “Hey, you’re not dead!” Ginny said, on seeing us appear. We probably should have warned them we would be popping our heads around the corner, as we almost took some friendly fire in the face. Also, I wish people would stop sounding like they were surprised I was able to survive.

  “No, we’re alive. Not sure how much longer though. Someone started putting rounds through the windshield so I slammed the brakes on and we jumped out. We think they’re somewhere in front of us. Or, at least they have only shot the front of the truck so far. They took out Ann’s window to so thinking maybe they’re on the front right of us somewhere. Came back here to get a plan going.”

  Ginny went ahead and summed it up and threw out a couple of suggestions.

  “We’re pinned down with an unknown number of snipers in front of us on the right. We can’t go back since we know there are guys back there who want to kill us. We’re assuming the want the truck with the supplies in it. The live fire will eventually get Zombies out here. We need to find and kill the sniper. The only way that is going to happen is if we’re giving him a lot more credit than he deserves. I’m hoping it’s just some dude laying on a roof with a deer rifle, versus an actual trained sniper. Since you’re both alive, it’s either not a trained sniper or he didn’t want you dead. In this situation, we should either call in artillery or charge the enemy. We have no artillery.”

  I was once again struck by the amount of knowledge her Pampa, an old Marine who had been with me and Ginny for the beginning of this journey before dying defending his granddaughter, had shared with her. It helped that she was a precocious young woman who soaked up knowledge as naturally as the rest of us breathe. Her proposed strategy and the reasoning behind it sounded pretty dead on. The problem was, even if the guy sucked, I didn’t see how moving towards him was going to help us a whole lot. Unless we got lucky and spotted the sniper almost immediately, we were just going to die faster.

  “How do we know where he is?” I asked.

  “Muzzle flashes.” Reeves answered immediately.

  If we could see muzzle flashes that implied a chunk of lead was moving towards us faster than the speed of sound.

  “No other way?” I asked. Thinking about it. “What if we get someone on the roof to the Penske to take a look? Maybe, be able to see something from up there? We could put Ginny up there with the AR-15 heavy barrel we’ve been lugging around. Then Reeves and I could make a break for the cars on the other side of the road to draw some fire.”

  “That actually sounds like a pretty good plan. I knew there was a reason we elected you to be in charge. Other than no one else wanted to do it.” Having properly ridiculed me, Reeves set about trying to figure out how we would be able to get Ginny on top of the trailer.

  We ended up tying some rope to a piece of wood and tying that to the handle on the back door. Then we picked the back door up, pulling Ginny up along with it. When she got close enough she figured out there was no way that was going to work so we got her back down. Then we moved one of the golf carts over next to the back corner and she scrambled up on top of that, swung out, and was able to clamber up onto the roof.

  Reeves handed her the AR-15 and we all waited to see if any shots were going to ring out. Either the guy was not high enough to see Ginny moving around on the top of the Penske or he just had not noticed her yet. Or, he was taking some time out to help a dog give birth. Who knows.

  Ginny got herself situate don the roof and Reeves and I worked the two dirt bikes we had taken from the house to the back of the truck. We debated putting down the ramp and then decided that would be too much of a giveaway so we just manhandled the bikes down instead. We had Thomas and Ann push the bikes over the edge and Reeves and I set them down on the ground. Ann turned out to be the only one of us who knew how to ride a dirt bike so she gave me a quick lesson and we got ready to be “muzzle-bait”.

  Reeves crawled underneath the truck, finding a vantage point where he could look for muzzle flashes without being easily detected by the sniper. Thomas was standing in the back of the truck, facing the opposite direction of everyone else, in case zombies, or the guys we had fought earlier, decided to show up. Ann was sitting on the dirt bike like a boss. We had our weapons slung over our backs so our hands would be empty to help us drive. I had no idea what I was doing.

  This was taking ‘fake it until you make it’ to a whole other level. Everyone was in position. Ann did a little hop up in the air and came down and her bike started right up. I did the same exact thing she did like six times, without anything happening. Ann ended up trading bikes with me, starting the one I was convinced was broken, with the same expert motion she had started hers with originally. Having efficiently emasculated me, she went ahead and rode her dirt bike out around the truck to draw fire and hopefully not get shot. I realized my girl had ridden off into gunfire without me so I twisted the throttle, almost falling off the bike when it accelerated way faster than I had anticipated, and went after her.

  Riding into the firing lane of a sniper to try and draw their fire is a sphincter tightening experience. I think it may be the way dingle berries are transformed into brown diamonds. I have never felt more exposed than I did when I went around the side of that Penske. I saw Ann up ahead of me, taking all kinds of fancy, evasive maneuvers. I was pretty proud of myself for not having fallen off the bike yet.

  Then I got shot.

  It felt like someone punched me in the left shoulder really hard with a needle. I landed on the ground, hard. I was trying to figure out how to get back on the bike when I realized I was in a lot of fucking pain. A lot. Also, there was a lot of blood. My blood. I heard shooting start from the top of the truck and saw Reeves roll out from the bottom of the truck and move towards me. Firing his rifle with one hand, in the general direction of the sniper, he dragged me under the truck with him. I tried to tell him thanks, but passed out instead.

  Entry 30: Into the Mountains

  I only passed out for a few seconds. Ann had somehow climbed under the truck with us and her and Reeves were busy trying to wrap bandages around my shoulder. Ann saw my eyes open up.

  “How do you feel?” She asked me, concern in her voice.

  “Another day in paradise. Don’t suppose you have a little magic pill on ya?” My arm was stiff and sore as hell. I think I was still coasting through the shock of being shot since I was not feeling the brunt of the pain yet. I was hoping to medicate before the pain had a chance to make its presence known.

  “Ginny thinks she got the sniper. Once I get you bandaged up we’re going to go ahead and try getting out of here. Ginny and Reeves are hopping in what’s left of the cab and we’ll get you in the back with me and Thomas.” Ann continued banging my arm around and wrapping it as she talked. When she had done as good as she could while squished underneath the truck, she pulled out a Ziploc of pills, stared at them for a second, then handed me two of them and dumped some water in my mouth.

  Reeves, Ann and I crawled out from under the truck. No one shot us. I was happy about that, being shot once today was plenty for me. I looked over to where I had fallen off the dirt bike. Looked like the bike was still fine. Ann jogged over and heaved it upright, pushing it towards the back of the truck. We could hear Zombies coming this way. Moans and yells were coming from all directions thanks to the extended gunplay. Reeves helped get the bike in the back then turned and jogged towards the cab. Ginny awkwardly dangled down from the roof of the truck and with our help swung in on top of the golf cart. She bounced out and headed to ride shotgun for Reeves. Literally,
she grabbed one of the shotguns and a bag with shells in it before she left.

  We heard a couple of shots from up front. Then I saw Thomas open up with his pistol on a Zombie who had managed to get uncomfortably close to the back of the truck. Ann got me situated, then got Thomas to help her pull the back door down and get it tied off. Once they had it tied off, they both lay down and trained their guns on the foot-wide gap. We really needed a welding for dummy’s book. I had all kinds of Mad Max ideas for building out a Zombie war machine.

  The truck started moving forward. I heard a few more shots from up front and imagined the scene up front with all the windows shot out and Zombies trying to climb in while Reeves and Ginny got the truck moving. Ginny would have to be on the lookout for additional snipers as well as trying to keep Zombies from reaching in and ripping off skin. Forget all that noise, luckily I’d gotten shot and landed on my head falling off the dirt bike. I was in the familiar position of being laid out on the floor in pain. The pain was slightly dulled thanks to Ann’s proclivity for handing pain killers out like skittles.