Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc Read online

  “The status is you’re freakin’ annoying.” Ginny had taken control of the Walkie in the front seats. “Ann is driving like a crazy woman, Bea and me are trying to fit two kids on top of us in the passenger seat and stay out of Ann’s way enough so that she can drive. We’ve busted through the main group of Zombies and are headed back the way we came. The Zombies are following us.”

  Ok. That did not sound too bad. At least we had escaped for now. I took a moment to look around. Sadly, the whole party now fit into one hearse. In the back were Reeves, John, Thomas, myself, Lily, and Chrissie. Chrissie was tucked into a tight ball in the corner, completely freaked out. Lily was bleeding like crazy from her lip. I looked over at her to get her attention.

  “Hey, Lily, you ok? What happened to your mouth?”

  Lily stared at me as she tried to stop the blood pouring out of her lip. Thomas whispered to me, “One of the Zombies got real close and tackled her before Reeves pulled the Zombie off and curb stomped it. I think it either bit her lip off or ripped it off. Either way, serious exchange of fluids and I’m worried about what I’ve seen in every Zombie movie ever.”

  I agreed. My first thought had been she had bit her own lip as I had not seen the whole, Reeves being a hero and her getting bit thing happen, as I was scrambling into the hearse and trying to make room for everybody else. Hearing that she had been bitten I was immediately worried she may ‘turn’. None of us had actually seen anyone turn from getting bit but considering this thing seemed to have started off as catchable as the common cold I decided not to take any chances.

  “Hey Lily, we’re worried that bite you got may make you catch whatever everyone else got. I’m going to have Reeves secure your arms behind you and have you put one of those SARs masks. I don’t want to freak you out but I think it’s the safest thing to do. You cool with that?”

  “I get it. No problem Steve. If I do turn into one of those things do me a favor and kill me quick.” Lily was crying as she said this last part. Thomas was wiping his eyes as well and I was getting a bit misty myself. Reeves moved towards Lily with some rope and I grabbed one of the masks out of a bag and went and helped him secure Lily. I went ahead and let her pop two of the Valiums I had pocketed as well.

  I felt the hearse brake to a sudden stop then heard Ann’s voice, “It’s daylight, I see a big group of them coming from the other direction now too. I’m taking this thing off the road and we need to go into stealth mode.”

  With that Ann pulled the hearse over to the side of the road. I heard the doors open and close and a few seconds later the twins crawled into the back with us along with Ginny and Bea. Ginny nodded at me, “Ann is going to squish down in the front seat with a blanket over her and kill the engine and we hope they all just go past us. The rest of us just need to stay quiet back here.”

  Entry 3: That answers that

  We all hunkered down in the back and tried to sleep. It was hot and only going to get hotter. We’d just seen our friends pulled down and ripped apart in front of us. Any second now, large groups of the Zombies were going to start passing us and if any of them noticed anything weird about the hearse, we would all be dead within a few minutes. Lily was sweating and bleeding. She had requested we spray sanitizer all over her lip. We had tried to comply but it hurt her so bad she started yelping, which we were afraid may be heard by the Zombies, so we quit after a few pumps on the bottle. My chest felt like fire ants were having a picnic on it.

  We were all miserable and scared.

  Bea asked if we might be able to turn on the engine and get the air conditioning working so at least we could cool down for a bit.

  “Are you kidding me?” Reeves whispered in an extremely pissed off tone. I think she might have actually been joking but Reeves had obviously been holding something back. He continued on his rant. “We can’t turn the car on cause then the Zombies will hear us and come and fucking eat us. Same as we don’t pull the triggers of our weapons until the absolute end when we have no other options. Then you wait for the order. That’s why we made Steve the boss. You shooting that one Zombie caused this whole fucking fiasco. You need to – “

  Beas’ husband, John, felt he needed to interfere in the exchange. “Hey Reeves, watch your tone. Watch your language too.”

  Reeves turned his attention to John and cocked his head at him, “You. Fat. Asshole. Your dumbass wife almost got me killed, she did get some other people killed. I don’t understand how you got your fat ass to the hearse and the others didn’t. Except that you’re a coward who ran faster than everybody else and got in the car faster than everybody else. Did you put the kid in ahead of – “

  John had leveled his shotgun at Reeves face. I tried to think of some way to interject and bring some peace. Before I could do anything, Reeves had taken the gun by the barrel and jammed it hard into Johns face. He did that twice then pulled the gun out of Johns grip, reversed it, and aimed it at John. Then Reeves face fell a little bit.

  “Dude, are you crying? What the hell? You’re a full-grown man with your son sitting in here and you’re going to cry like a little bitch?”

  “Everybody chill out and shut up. Reeves, put down the gun. Bea, put down your gun. Nobody is shooting anybody. Reeves smells bad enough on the outside, no reason to find out what he smells like on the inside.”

  I was staring at them hard, wondering what I would do if none of them listened to the order. A Zombie chose to help me out by wandering over to the hearse and starting to bang on it. The argument had been loud enough to catch the curiosity of a nearby Zombie. Not too loud though, as the Zombie wandered off after whacking the car a few times. Everyone in the back of the hearse gently set their weapons down. Reeves did not give John back his gun. Bea had the twins snuggle in between her and John. Everyone went back to quietly trying to fall asleep.

  In all the excitement, we forgot that Lily had been bit. There was really no excuse. Every Zombie movie ever has someone who got bit and then turns and screws up the day for everybody around them. We had all told ourselves not to fall for that trap. We had done the smart thing and tied her up with a mask covering her mouth. The smarter thing would have been a gag. We had all been trying to sleep for about five hours when she started screaming her head off and bouncing around trying to attack us in our sleep.

  She rolled on top of Thomas with her hands tied behind her back, the only thing keeping her from biting him was the thin mask covering her mouth, held on by a flimsy rubber band. Thomas yelled out and shoved her off of him but she jumped back on.

  I fumbled around for my knife and saw Reeves doing the same. Chrissie was trying to push herself as far away as she could get. It was pretty dark in the back of the Hearse with the window slides closed, to keep us hidden from the Zombies outside. Thomas was yelling and pushing Lily off of him. I finally got my knife out and stabbed Lily in the hip as hard as I could. The knife hit a bone or something before it had gone very far in and turned in my hand, twisting my wrist painfully as the grip slipped out of my fingers.

  I looked back and saw that Bea had her shotgun aimed at Lily. “Don’t shoot!” I whisper-yelled at her. Reeves plunged towards Lily with his knife in his hand. Lily completely ignored everything happening around her and continued trying to get at Thomas who was fending her off with his one good arm.

  Reeves grabbed Lily and stabbed repeatedly into her chest and stomach area. Blood poured everywhere in the back. Lily finally stopped moving and Thomas was able to push her body off of him as Reeves, gasping for air, settled back down with his back against wall of the hearse. I reached over and worked my knife out of her hip bone and slid it back into its scabbard on my belt.

  My Walkie went off, “What’s going on back there? I’m ducked way down but that was loud enough where anything outside was bound to have heard something.”

  I hit the talk button and responded, “Hey Ann, Lily turned and attached Thomas, he’s fine, Lily is dead, going quiet again since I expect we’ll have some banging on the wal
ls here shortly.”

  Predictably enough, we heard some moans and some tapping on the outside of the car briefly afterwards. Nothing too serious though, the main pack of Zombies must have wandered away and this hearse must be pretty sound proof. There was freakin blood everywhere. I passed around sanitizer gel and a box of the rubber gloves, the kind doctors wear, we had snagged them at the drug store. Everyone sanitized and pulled on gloves.

  Once the Zombies had quieted down, I hit Ann up on the Walkie.

  “Dinner and a movie?” I asked.

  “Boring. Is that really all you got?” She came back.

  “Fine. I’ll keep working on it. Thoughts?” I was looking for her input. I had some ideas already but wanted to get some consensus going.

  “Thought on a date is that’s your problem. My job is to show up looking good. Everything else is on you. Thoughts on what we need to do here, I don’t think we can go North any further in this hearse. I think we need to get out and hoof it through the woods past this traffic jam and try to find another car on the other side. I’m going quiet now. Work it out with the group and let me know what’s up in a few.”

  I looked around the back and hit Ginny first, “What do you think?”

  Ginny looked up, “I agree with Ann, we aren’t going any further North in this corpse wagon. We need to abandon it and try and get past the jam up on foot. I say we wait for dark and go for it.”

  Reeves nodded, “Works for me.”

  Bea and John were furiously whispering to one another, Bea looked up, “We’re good.”

  Something about the way she said it seemed off to me. “You sure Bea, John, you guys have any other ideas or anything? Feel free to throw them out there for us to talk about.”

  No one seemed to have anything else so I let it lie. I put my head back against a bag of clothes, closed my eyes, and attempted to fall asleep, ignoring the knowledge of the various liquids I was probably laying in.

  Entry 4: Bea’trayal

  Sleeping in there sucked. The twins took turns crying and being shushed and trying to be kids but getting shut down. Bea and John were whispering to each other, a lot. I didn’t trust it but it’s not like I could tell them to quit whispering or separate them. It was so freakin’ hot and nasty in the back of that cramped, trashed, putrid smelling car. Every time I felt miserable, I reminded myself of the time I spent three days sitting on a toilet with the Zombies right outside the door. This experience was starting to get close to that one though.

  It was finally cooling off and getting dark. We continued to stay still until about midnight. I hit Ann on the Walkie, “Hey Ann, can you see what you can see?”

  Ann came back, “Looking around, I don’t actually see anything, it’s pretty dark though.”

  “How about a nice moonlit hike through the woods for a first date?” I heard Thomas snicker as Reeves mimed shoving his finger down his throat and puking. He had cracked open one of those glowing green necklaces, we had snagged a bunch of them from the counter display at the drug store, and was wearing it around his neck now to give us all a little bit of light. Ignoring them, I asked, “Everyone else ready to go? Start gathering your stuff and gearing up. We’re out of here in about twenty minutes. Take the essentials only, food, medicine, weapons, and ammo. Lots of ammo.”

  Everyone got busy putting their gear together. Once we were all ready, I grabbed the pack full of medicine for Ann to carry and the much larger backpack full of crap I was preparing to lug through the woods. My wrist was sprained and swelling up from the fight with Lily. Thinking of that I looked over to where her dead, blood covered body was lying next to Thomas. I probably should have switched places with the kid or something. I doubt he had gotten any sleep at all.

  The good thing about my wrist hurting was that it took my mind off my chest, sweating all over the lacerations had not helped. I went ahead and popped a Zithromax just for the hell of it. Once everyone seemed to be pretty much ready, I hit Ann on the radio and got the all clear from her.

  I looked around, “Ok. Everybody out. Once you’re out let’s all gather by the tailgate and then we can move as a group towards the tree line. No guns unless I give the word. Ok. Let’s go.”

  Ginny opened the door and bounced out, grabbing her pack once she was out of the car and slinging it on her back, all while methodically looking around for threats. We followed behind her as silently as possible, leaving Gregg, the twins, and Bea for last. Ann came around the side and met us in the back with a baseball bat held tightly in her right hand. I handed her the pack with all the medicines in it and she slung it on her back.

  The hearses engine roared to life. WTF. The back door slammed shut and we all heard the lock engage.

  My Walkie came on, I heard Johns voice coming over it, “Sorry to do it this way but Bea and me are headed back to the warehouse. We stay with you guys we’re just going to all end up dead. We’ll take care of the twins, don’t worry. I suggest you haul ass for the woods now since starting this thing up probably is going to get some unwelcome attention.”

  Then they drove away. Leaving all of us standing there with our mouths wide open. John must have gone around and jumped in the driver’s side as soon as Ann had gotten out. Giving Bea time enough to position herself to be able to shut the back door as we were all looking around making sure it was safe for the rest of the kids to come out.

  I hit the Walkie talk button as they drove up the incline headed South on the interstate. “God speed guys, watch out for those kids.”

  Neither receiving nor expecting an answer, I motioned for everyone to start moving towards the wood line. We heard some moans and saw a couple of Zombies headed our way out of the woods. I raised my sword and moved forward to engage. Ginny, Ann and Reeves lined up beside me and we advanced on the Zombies, shielding Thomas with his lame arm and Chrissie who was cowering behind us. We made short work of the two Zombies and kept moving towards the cover of the wood line. We finally got there and went into the woods.

  We stumbled our way forwards through underbrush and briars for a while until we got to a small clearing. I called for a break and everyone sat down in the clearing.

  “I’m worried about the twins.” Ann said out loud to no one in specific.

  Everyone echoed the sentiment. It was pretty obvious to most of us that Bea and John had survived this long by luck. First, the manager of the night shift for the warehouse, a man named Hank, had grabbed them out of their house and taken them to the warehouse where he and others, including Ann, had kept them safe. Then my small group had come along and gotten them out safely when the warehouse was overrun. Protecting them over and over again through multiple fights. It actually blew my mind that they had the balls to leave us like that.

  Out loud I simply said, “Bea and John made their choice. If they can make it back to their house and raid the warehouse for supplies every once in a while, they should be fine. There’s not much we can do about it now. Does anyone think we should try going after them or do we just keep moving North?”

  “Trying to go after them through all the Zombies they’ve stirred up by now is pretty much a death sentence. We’d have to wait a day or two and then follow them, on foot. I’m thinking if they were still alive by the time we found them then they’ll probably be holed up somewhere safe and not want to leave anyway. If they don’t make it somewhere safe, then they’re all going to be dead before we can find them. I think we should just let them go and hope they make it out alright.”

  Everyone had listened respectfully while Ginny talked. When she was expressing her thought on what a plan should be it was always a good idea to listen. Her Pampa, the late Gunny, had imparted a good deal of wisdom to her. Especially around the idea of turning options over and over in your head, to consider them from every angle before making a decision.

  Ann nodded her agreement. Thomas and Chrissie also nodded their heads in the affirmative.

  Reeves was pissed. “We should have let both those idiots get eaten b
y Zombies. I don’t know if I can just walk away from those twins. Bea and John chose to be morons and leave. Gregg is there kid so he’s pretty much stuck. Those twins didn’t have a choice though. They were all our responsibility.”

  I agreed with that too. Part of me wanted to track down Bea and John and beat them down to the ground and take the twins back. The analytical part of me agreed with Ginny though, they were gone. That sparked an idea.

  “How about this. I agree with Reeves that they are our responsibility. I also agree with Ginny and everyone that if they’ve made it down the road then they’re probably safe and we don’t have to worry about it. I say we spend the night in this clearing, then hike back to the wood line and get someone up a tree or something to look out over the road and see if they see anything. Then we hike another four hours down the road and stop every hour to take another look. If we don’t see anything then we can go ahead and head North with a clear conscience that they were on a roll and might make it out of here. If we see they’ve just pulled over somewhere we’ll use the Walkies to talk to them and see if we can get the twins back.”