Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (13 page)

Chapter Seven – Mike Journal Entry
6

Eliza
was late or early (and gone), or she had taken a different route or
she had laid a trap for us, realizing what I was going to do. These
three very different scenarios kept playing out in my head, each
vying for its own time in the spotlight. I could deal with her
being late or even the trap. Those two scenarios at least meant we
were still in the game.

If she had passed while we were messing with
Re-Pete, then every second we wasted here put my family in more
danger. Another route could potentially be as bad, but as long as
we were running parallel to her and not hours behind, I could deal
with that also. That crawling sensation kept worming its way up my
back that Re-Pete had been some sort of diversion and she was
laughing as she barreled down the highway. The wondering was a
nightmare. I was seconds away from pulling the whole plug when I
noticed the slightest sway to a young sapling; it was not
windy.

“Everybody down!” I yelled.

Ten seconds went by, twenty seconds, I think
we were closing in on a minute and still nothing. I was beginning
to feel a little foolish and now that nagging itching sensation was
coming back.
Screw it.
I was ready to go. Gary reached out
and put his hand on my shoulder when he sensed that I might be
getting ready to move. How I let the sound of that caravan slip by
my senses, I had no clue.

“Thanks,” I told Gary.

“You always were a little impulsive,” he told
me.

BT was on my left side, looking intently at
the rolling nightmare coming our way. His grip tightened on his
rifle. Fat beads of sweat rolled off his forehead.

“You good, big man?” I asked him.

“Right as rain,” he answered without ever
taking his eyes off the lead truck. “You think she’s in that first
one?”

“Maybe before that invasion on Camp Custer
when I almost killed her. She might be an arrogant bitch; but she’s
also a self preservationist.”

“Too bad,” BT said.

The three of us were down in a culvert on the
side of the road. It was almost steep enough that we were just
about standing where we lay. Two tandem-trailer semis thundered
past. Following them was what appeared to be an endless chain of
troop transports and more tractor-trailers.

“Looks like Eliza’s playing for keeps,” Gary
said, sticking his head over the embankment slightly.

“When has that ever NOT been the case?” BT
asked.

I can’t say that I had ever seen BT quite as
nervous as he was now and I was picking up on it, which in turn,
made me more nervous. Gary seemed blissfully ignorant of it
all.

“Sure would be nice to get a hold of one of
those troop transports,” Gary said.

“I vote for just making it through the day,”
I told him.

“I second that,” BT said, sticking his hand
up slightly.

We could hear gunshots up ahead of us. Paul,
Bryan and Mrs. Deneaux were holding up their end and we were
getting close to seeing what we could do about holding our own.

It was long seconds before the entire rolling
army knew that it was under attack, but the lead tandem-trailer
truck lying on its side kind of put a damper on their forward
progress. The screeching metal as the truck slid sideways down the
highway grated on my fillings, the vibrations hurting my teeth. I
was thankful I did not have a steel plate in my head; it would have
probably scrambled my brains more than they already were. The large
truck had finally come to a stop. Sporadic fire was being returned
as some of Eliza’s human sympathizers started to realize they were
being shot at and that the lead driver had not simply had an
accident.

Eliza was close, I could sense the waves of
cruelty emanating from her like ripples in a pond. I’m sure I could
have followed the signal back to its source, but then she would
have known I was here.

We could hear multiple truck doors opening
and men scrambling to get into a defensive posture. Boot falls fell
no more than five feet from where our heads were. A troop transport
truck almost at the edge of my abilities was parked with the engine
running; it was full of zombies.

“Anything?” BT asked, gripping his rifle so
tightly, I thought he was going to fuse the metal with the
wood.

Now it was my turn to sweat. “It’s full of
zombies. They’re just sitting in there.”

“They’re very well behaved,” Gary said. Not
sure why; it was most likely nerves.

“Mike, these guys are getting close. It’s
only going to take one of them to look over and we’re screwed,” BT
said.

“Cool, so I wasn’t already feeling enough
pressure; that oughta help.” I told BT I was doing my best to not
cause a self-induced brain bleeder.

A hastily thrown cigarette butt flew by the
left side of Gary’s face. I thought he was going to start coughing
from the smoke. Gary, in his entire life had never smoked, not one
normal cigarette and not one of those funny, little left-handed
ones that I had enjoyed so many of in my youth. Who am I kidding? I
still enjoyed them from time to time in these latter years,
especially at Widespread Panic shows.

Gary was turning blue in a desperate bid to
keep himself from coughing. I grabbed the cigarette and chucked it
further down the slope we were standing on.

“Talbot,” BT said, with no small measure of
alarm.

We could hear men talking. The gunfire from
our band had stopped. They had done their part and left before
becoming outmanned and out gunned. Eliza’s men were about to fan
out and find whoever had attacked.

I turned my thoughts back to the zombies, who
were still waiting patiently in the truck. “Eliza’s got them under
her control,” I told the group.

“We gotta go, Mike,” BT said, gripping my
shoulder. “We might be able to make it to the tree line before they
see us.

“Doubtful,” Gary said.

“Okay, she’s not communicating with them now,
or she would have found me meddling about,” I said aloud, but
mostly for myself.

“Mike, it’s now or never,” BT said, flipping
his safety off, while Gary did the same.

“Okay, so she sent them an order and kind of
tied it off. Does that make sense?” I was still only talking to
myself. “It’s almost like a repeating message and she just has it
on loop.”

“You should maybe pull the plug on that
machine,” Gary said as he got himself into a proper shooting
position.

“No power cord,” I said, intensifying my
concentration. I’m still uncertain as to how this is done though.
Can you really think harder? I find just thinking about thinking
leads me astray. “More like a rope or a cord.” We were seconds away
from capture and/or death or vice versa. My senses were so
heightened, I could hear individual pebbles as they were crushed
under the boot heels of the troops approaching. “I found the knot!”
I said excitedly.

“Weeks! I heard something over by the side of
the road!” one of the men said.

“Time to die,” BT said, though whether it was
about the man that shouted or for us, he did not clarify.

I felt sort of sorry that the last thing that
man saw on this planet was most likely the biggest man he had ever
encountered, popping up from the side of the road with a rifle.

“Got it!” I shouted triumphantly just as BT’s
rifle shuddered from the gas release of two bullets. Weeks’ friend
caught the first round in the side of his neck; blood pumped out as
the man tried in vain to staunch the flow.

A small piece of hell broke out that day as
BT’s rifle kept jumping from the expended rounds. He was screaming
a war cry. I watched in horror, almost matrix-like, as return fire
began to pass him by, coming dangerously close. I was convinced I
was going to watch my best friend die in slow motion. And then the
real fun began. Shouts of alarm, pain and terror began to ring out
all around us as “freed” zombies began to pour from the troop
transport.

Speeders had come to our aid. As Eliza’s men
had begun to coalesce on us, the speeders had attacked from behind.
They were relentless as they chewed on anything within reach. Shots
fired wildly as the men turned to face their new threat. BT was
still screaming and firing. I had to get up from my hiding spot to
drag him down. Okay, to be fair, nobody really drags BT anywhere.
He sort of let me. Watching people, even the enemy, being eaten is
not something to be witnessed.

“Don’t kill them all, BT, or the speeders
will be looking for another food source, and I know I can beat you
in a footrace,” I told him.

“That’s alright. I know I’m faster than your
brother,” he said, smiling.

“That’s not cool, not cool at all,” Gary
said. “Can we maybe go now?” he asked as the screams
intensified.

We ran parallel to the road, making sure to
stay deep in our culvert. Now that I had found Eliza’s string and
knew exactly where it was, pulling it open was fairly easy. I was
like a kid that had just discovered an unlocked candy store. Sounds
incredible at first until you’re elbow-deep in salt water taffy and
three pounds of licorice are already inside your stomach, oh! and
don’t forget about the dozen or so sugar sticks you’ve already
eaten. I was sort of drunk with the power of it, not yet realizing
how much more danger I was putting us in. Apparently, Eliza wasn’t
fond of the slower-ambling shufflers we’d all come to know and
love. She was much more interested in the devastation that could be
wrought from their faster, more mobile brethren.

Zombies were dropping out of trucks like
blood from a pierced hemophiliac. (Think about that for a second.)
Problem was, there were way more zombies than food. Some zombies
had been shot or simply ran out of room on the roadway or were
simply pushed out of the way began to find themselves in our
culvert. Some were far beyond making a go at us, others were
not.

“Company,” Gary said, looking over his
shoulder. He had run up into my back and almost through it.

“You’d better pick up the pace,” I told BT,
turning back to see what Gary was looking at.

“You sure I’m the slowest?” Gary asked,
jockeying for position on my side.

“Gary, I’d trip you if you weren’t,” I told
him.

He stopped to look at my expression. I’m not
sure if he was happy with the answer he divined. He began to push
ahead of BT.

“What the hell?” BT said loudly.

I started firing. I was well beyond the point
of caring if we were discovered or not. Besides, Eliza’s men were
doing all they could to merely survive right now. They were in full
scale battle mode, whereas we were just a minor skirmish in
comparison.

BT took an immediate left, heading straight
for the tree line. The zombies had heard the cacophony and started
to come into our ditch, further up, effectively cutting off our
escape that way. A quick glance to the left had me wondering which
avenue would be better, thorns the size of small rhino horns that
glistened wetly, each looking big enough to bleed all of us dry or
the zombies. Good thing BT was cutting the path first!

I was vaguely aware some of the trucks were
starting up and pulling away. Some of Eliza’s henchmen would
survive the day, but most, I felt, had met the end they so well
deserved.

I almost fell over BT as he slid down like a
baseball player going for a triple on a ball that was, at best, a
double. Gary was way ahead of the curve on me on this one. He was
on his hands and knees, crawling underneath the worst of the
brambles. A zombie stepped on Gary’s ankle in an attempt to get at
him, and if not for getting hung up in the stickers, it would have
succeeded. The zombie kept trying to power its way through and was
only rewarded with more piercings. I got down and began to scramble
for all I was worth. The top of my hoodie got snagged on a branch
and I was hung up like dirty laundry. A zombie grabbed onto the
bottom part of my leg and was coming in for a bite when I screamed
for him to
STOP!

I turned to look at it and see if I had any
effect on him. The intensity of my yell forced blood to pour from
its nose. Its eyes glazed over for a fraction of a second and then
it just stopped. It didn’t move. I would have liked to maybe kick
it in the head four or five hundred times, but I wanted to get out
of there quickly. More zombies were coming and I wasn’t sure if I
could do the same to them. I snapped off the branch I was affixed
to and went deeper into the tangle.

BT had pretty much uprooted the fauna as he
went through. You could have driven a Geo Metro through the hole he
left. The only problem with his passage was that it left an avenue
for the zombies to follow. Once we all made it through the ten or
so feet of thorns and into the woods proper, I stopped to get an
idea of our pursuit. Zombies were haplessly stuck in the path that
Gary and I had forged, but zombies were already halfway through
BT’s gap.

“Should have been a little more careful about
that,” BT said.

“You think?” I asked him.

Gary killed the first two zombies coming
through, sealing the hole for the moment.

Zombies began to fan out. Some would be stuck
hopefully forever; others were beginning to find inroads toward
us.

“We’ve got to get going,” I said, pretty much
needlessly.

“I thought Justin was the one with the flair
for the obvious?” BT asked.

“He had to get it from somewhere,” Gary
added.

I was going to tell them these rifles would
be useless in the dense copse of trees, but refer back to the
“obvious” banter. Zombies were already in the woods behind us, and
were approaching as rapidly as the vegetation would allow.

“BT, go!” I said, smacking him on the
shoulder. “Gary you get behind him. “I’ll try to make them
stop.”

The gunfire from the roadway had become
sporadic and then had abruptly ended. The food was doing what food
was supposed to do, either getting eaten or fleeing. As the menu
became slim pickings up top, more and more began to find their way
down the embankment and joined in the pursuit of us.