Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth

by R. S. Merritt

  “See how I walked away from the car when I had to puke, boss?” He asked.

  “Yeah, whatever, put this thing in gear and we need to deep six that poison juice somewhere along the way. I never want to see it again.” We started rolling. For the first time, the windshields and side windows being missing was an advantage as it helped air out the cab quickly. We really needed it to rain or something. The cologne had just made the smell worse. We heard the sound of glass crashing behind us and looking in the mirrors saw that someone had gone ahead and taken care of getting rid of the moonshine for us.

  The cab stunk. Reeves looked over at me.

  “You do realize it takes a special kind of person to make an apocalypse somehow worse. You are special.”

  I couldn’t argue. This was not a highlight in my life. I definitely had failed to impress Ann. On the plus side, it couldn’t get much worse than this. At some point, today my head would stop pounding, I’d find some scope and clean my mouth out, the cab would be fumigated by the fresh mountain air and I’d get the energy to change clothes and maybe even rinse off a bit. I was hoping we’d make it the rest of the day without taking any more sniper fire or being piled on by any more Zombies. If all we had to contend with today were hangovers and pissed off females, I would write it off as an excellent day.

  We continued down the interstate, through the mountains. I-40 wound around the sides of mountains and followed the contours of the mountain peaks and valleys. At any given time, we were either going up or down a mountain. The grades were steep in some places and the fear of the brakes failing was real. There were signs for runaway truck ramps. Passing one, I looked over at it and basically it just looked like a sandy death trap on the side of the road. I didn’t see us barreling down the mountain at full speed and being able to just gently bring it all to a stop by gracefully turning onto a random dirt road. In my mind’s eye, that looked more like a 24 foot Penske Truck doing a few cartwheels into the trees followed by plunging down a cliff and exploding.

  We did not end up having any issues going through the mountains. I kept expecting to see a jackknifed truck blocking the entire road or a mob of Zombies coming around a corner after us. I only saw one Zombie the entire time. As we drove slowly around a sharp curve, I glanced in the passenger side mirror and saw a tattered figure pull itself out of the weeds beside the road and start lurching along after us. We continued down the highway and the sad figure was lost to sight as we rounded another curve.

  The chill wind was hitting us directly through the missing windshield as we drove the winding roads. It turned out to be a great hangover cure. It made us so miserably cold that we were not bothered as much by the hangover symptoms. As we rounded yet another bend and started heading down yet another decline, the road was starting to smooth out noticeably, as we came out of the mountains. I had been worried there would be an early snow or something that blocked us, but it looked like we had managed to dodge that bullet.

  The bullet hole in my arm hurt. I had removed the patch from my eye after I got puke all over it. I had to put on a pair of sunglasses to keep the eye from hurting in the bright daylight, but it seemed to be functioning, at least a little bit. If I shut my good eye and just used the bad eye everything looked like I was looking at it from underwater. Something was better than the nothing I had been living with though. I mostly wanted to chalk up some sort of physical win to show off to Ann. I figured not looking like a pirate poser would go a long way in that direction.

  Entry 33: Hand Grenades and Horseshoes

  We were finally getting close. In normal times, we’d have been in Pigeon Forge in about thirty minutes from here. We’d stop in at a store and grab some supplies for the cabin before heading up there to unpack and unwind from the drive. We were so close I felt like I could taste it. We just needed to drive through a town full of Zombies first. Then get supplies somehow, followed by driving up a narrow mountain road to the cabin. We needed to do this in a loud ass truck with the windshield missing so Zombies could just hop on in. We were pretty far off the ground but that didn’t seem to be keeping them out.

  We had driven out of the mountains and down to 411. The idea being to try and take the least populated route to get to Pigeon Forge. We’d take the 411 all the way into Pigeon Forge. We needed to send someone ahead to scout out the place before we just barreled in though. I was thinking the easiest and safest way to send someone in would be on one of the dirt bikes. That meant Thomas and I were out of the selection due to our arm issues, Reeves still looked miserable, and Ginny might not be able to touch the ground from the seat. Like it or not, it looked like Ann would be the best choice for this recon mission.

  Reeves pulled us over into a gas station parking lot. The food mart part of it looked like they had locked it up pretty tight, but people had still managed to bend back the steel barrier and break the windows to get in. We all got out and stood around the parking lot, stretching and rubbing sleepy and wind worn eyes. I went ahead and voiced my plan on sending Ann out ahead to scout the road and see if it was a viable option for us to try and drive right on in. Reeves argued he should be the one to go on the scouting mission. His basic point seeming to be a that he was a man and Ann was a woman. This did not go over well.

  Five minutes later, we watched as Ann pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the road. Reeves was fuming, the rest of us were slightly entertained. Thomas crawled into the back of the truck to get some more sleep. Ginny asked if I was looking forward to getting to the cabin.

  “I am. I’m worried about what we may find when we get there. I’m happy you guys are going to be with me when we get there. Hoping you are good with me having drug you all across the mountains”

  Reeves spoke up. “We’re still alive, that’s more than around 99 percent of the population can claim so I’m pretty happy with the route you’ve picked. Happy I’ve stuck with you too. I don’t think I could leave because I’m not sure you’d survive.”

  Ginny shook her head, agreeing with Reeves. “It would be like letting a puppy dog wander out into the woods by itself. Just sad.”

  I waited for them to both crack up, but the looks of seriousness on their faces was way worse. I considered pouring my water bottle over them or possibly just calling them both names with long strings of expletives in them.

  “Well, in spite of the fact that you’re both jerks, I still appreciate you being here. Even if you’re only here because you feel sorry for me. Maybe you should both – “

  I was cut-off from the rest of what I was going to say. We all heard the distinctive two clicks come over the radio. We had worked out a quick code when Ann took off. One click meant she was going to be a bit longer but she was Ok, two clicks meant she was in trouble and needed help but she was safe and we could come in careful, three clicks meant pedal down and guns blazing. Knowing Ann, two clicks were a regular persons three clicks. We all knew this and we all wasted no time getting in the truck and rolling out.

  Reeves, Ginny and I crowded the front while Thomas was in the back with the door up. Ready to shot anything that came after us. Reeves was driving way too fast for the winding road and none of us cared. We came around one turn and there was a green pickup truck laying on its side. It looked like it had caught on fire after it rolled as it was a burnt-out husk. Ann would have easily fit around it on her bike. We were not going to fit but that didn’t seem to bother Reeves. He gunned the engine and hit the side to the pickup, sending it flying off the road and us all bouncing around in the cab.

  Reeves managed to maintain control and we kept on trucking down the road. Until we weren’t. The front tire was fine one second and the next Reeves was all over the road again as the tire blew out. With all the damage from firefights and such it was a miracle out tires had stayed filled up for this long. Hitting the pickup must have been the last straw. We were driving with a big field on the right side with a bout a ten foot drop down into it and a large rock wall on the driver’s side. It was a touch c
hoice for Reeves to make on how to angle to maintain control.

  Whatever choice he made it sucked. We bounced off the rock face and out into the field. It became very obvious why Evil Knievel did not jump canyons driving a Penske truck. The things were not very aerodynamic and the only thing worse than flying off the side of the road in one was the landing. Habit and the way Reeves had been driving had us all strapped in so when we did crash into the field the momentum did not smear us all over the filed. Instead we just got knocked out in the cab. The truck rolled onto its side after hitting.

  I came too with Reeves stepping on my face trying to climb out through the windshield. Ginny had already gotten out. I fumbled around with my seatbelt and got it to unclick so I could crawl out too. Luckily, my seatbelt had been across the opposite shoulder from the one I had been shot in. As it was, both shoulders were in a lot of pain now. I needed Ann to hand me a few of those “I no longer give a shit about the pain” pills.

  Ann! I moved with more purpose now. Crashing a huge truck off a ten foot drop into a field had momentarily thrown us all off our mission. I got out and saw that Ginny and Reeves were both standing there. They both looked dazed and had blood dripping off them in various places but overall they were fine. Oh, hell. Thomas had been in the back with all our crap and definitely did not have a seatbelt on back there. I started limping that direction as fast as I could. Ginny and Reeves must have had the same thought as they both ran past me to get to the back.

  By the time I got there, Thomas had been pulled out from under a bunch of boxes and was sitting on the ground. He got the award for the most blood as it looked like he had gone face first into the side of the truck. His mouth was bleeding, his forehead was bleeding, he was just a mess. He grabbed a pillow case and wrapped it around his head then started working on dragging out one of the four wheelers.

  Obviously concussed and with blood all over him he wasn’t getting very far with the four-wheeler. Reeves had him stop yanking on the handle bar with his one good arm and sent him out of the truck for Ginny to patch up. Thomas stumbled past me as I moved in and helped Reeves pull the four-wheeler out of the pile of garbage. We got both of them out and also a couple boxes of ammo and some rifles and pistols. We started shoving everything in duffle bags and securing it on the four-wheelers. The four wheelers were intended for guys going into the woods to hunt deer so had bungee cords and plenty of room for placing bags.

  Reeves found a box full of bandages and medical supplies and tossed that to Ginny, who started wrapping most of Thomas’s face in bandages. Strapping on an extra pistol and making sure I had plenty of clips shoved in my pockets for the AK-47 hanging over my shoulder I asked if everyone was ready. Reeves hopped on a four-wheeler and we helped Thomas get on behind him. I got on the other one with Ginny behind me. This was fortunate as she helped me figure out how to start the thing. We pulled both of them around to the side of the incline going up to the highway and gunned the engines to get up onto the highway.

  Once on the highway we started rolling towards Ann again. We passed another burnt out wreck and then saw something that made my blood run cold. Ann’s bike was laid out in the middle of the road. Her backpack and equipment were strewn all over the road. I saw a smashed electronic device that I recognized as her radio. We pulled up slowly to the wreck. Reeves and Ginny jumped off and took up posts on either side of us to keep Thomas and I covered while we looked over the wreckage for clues. I looked down at the bike and did not see anything that would tell me what it was doing laying here, abandoned, in the middle of the road.

  I picked up the bike and it did not appear to have crashed too hard as the handlebars and wheel were still in alignment. None of the pieces of it seemed broken. It seemed more like it had just been dropped to the ground. My first thought was some survivalist hillbilly types had ambushed her and drug her off to be a slave. If we were going to find her, we needed to be on the trail now. I only knew of one person who may be able to give us an idea which direction she had been taken.

  I pulled the Sat phone out of my pocket and hit the power button. Reeves had nodded when he saw me take it out. I waited impatiently as it did its startup sequence and asked me for my password. I put in the password and sent a quick text message explaining someone in our party had been kidnapped and I needed to know if they saw anything. A minute later a message scrolled across asking us to send out our location. This time, I didn’t hesitate but reached over and held down the button that would send our Latitude and Longitude back to the Navy base. A message scrolled across asking us to standby.

  We seemed to wait forever, in reality it was probably about five minutes, then instead of a message scrolling across the phone rang. I hit the answer button. It was the Lieutenant.

  “Hey Steve, I need to make sure this is you and that you are not under duress. If you’re not under duress say chipmunk and tell me something to let me know it is, you.”

  “Uh. Chipmunk. Lieutenant, Ann is missing, she was scouting ahead of us on a dirt bike and we just found the bike in the middle of the road. I think she was taken. Last time we talked you were pissed because Reeves shot you in the foot.”

  “I did not.” Reeves said, loud enough to be heard over the phone.

  “Ok, I believe you. I had to call you from a different line. I need you to send me the address of the cabin and I need you to be there before one in the morning, with or without Ann. The guys you saw in the helicopter while you were laying under your truck on the bridge are there and they’re not going to be later. They probably have Ann. Try the big Bass Pro Shop. Remember, no matter what, you need to be in your cabin before one. I’m sorry but that is all I can say. Good luck and god speed.”

  The Lieutenant killed the connection. I sent the address for the cabin, waited for a confirmation, and then powered down the phone.

  Reeves spoke first once I had made sure everyone knew what I had just been told, “What I got out of that is the Koreans are here, they have an FOB at the Bass Pro Shop, and we’re going to be ruining their day around one in the morning. Which is why we need to be in the cabin so they can make sure that is one area they don’t bomb.”

  “We can’t just go in guns blazing and try to rescue Ann. We’re going to be going against a troop of professional soldiers. We’re going to have to figure something out. Which, we’ve got about twelve hours to plan, execute, and be hauling ass for the cabin.” Ginny looked flustered. We all just wanted to go in guns blazing right now but she was right. We’d all end up dead and that wouldn’t help anybody.

  Reeves was staring at the map. “Ok, 411 runs into 66 which runs into I-40 which is where the bass pro shop is as far as I can tell. Planning and shit would be great, but it’s pretty far. I’m leaning towards the plan being we ride like hell and shoot our way in like Billy The Kid. Grab Ann, repeat the process, but headed towards the cabin. We’ve got a long drive so if anybody thinks of anything better along the way we can switch plans.”

  That sounded good to me. I had no desire to sit here and talk while Ann was being held by a bunch of Koreans. I had no idea if Koreans were typically bad people or not but I was rapidly becoming a racist. As soon as I figured out exactly what someone from Korea looked like I was going to hate them. A brief conversation ensued in which Reeves and Ginny were decided to be the best shots. That meant they would be shooting while the two guys with only one arm each drove the four-wheelers. Another brief conversation ensued in which it was determined that was probably a stupid idea and it was decided Ginny and Reeves would drive while Thomas and I rode bitch.

  I wanted Thomas with Ginny so we could send them out of danger if necessary. Reeves and I would take the lead. They were under strict instructions to turn around and ride the other way if we came under fire. Knowing them, they probably wouldn’t follow the order, but whatever. I hopped on the four-wheeler behind Reeves. He told me I could put my arms around him if I got cold. It was going to be a long ride.

  Entry 34: Damn the Torpedoes


  Reeves was not playing around. We started as fast as the four-wheeler would go and did not slow down. I was good with that. I just hoped Ginny and Thomas were able to keep up. Looking over my shoulder I saw Ginny looked good to go. Thomas was hanging onto her with his one arm like crazy. I personally thought he was milking it as an excuse to hug up on her. Young love.

  I looked back forward again. Reeves was aiming us at a gap between two cars narrow enough where I was worried my legs may be ripped off when we went through. He didn’t slow down or hesitate. I thought about closing my eyes for the rest of the ride. I had my pistol and other weapons strapped to me where I could get to them easily enough standing on the ground. Strapped on the back of this little country boy crotch rocket, riding bitch to the reincarnation of Evil Knievel, I doubted I could get them off my body without a real chance of dropping them. If I did get them off my body, there was no way I was going to be able to shoot accurately.