ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (12 page)

Fortunately, for us, not every bridge that we passed under had a horde of zombies laying in wait to fling themselves down onto us.

That fact caused me to wonder why any group of zombies that were scared senseless of the water, would gather in the middle of a bridge that spanned the largest river in the country in the first place, but some did, even though during the daytime, they could clearly see the river from their vantage point.

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DAY 13

Day 13 was the day that everything changed for us, and changed everything for everyone we would meet going forward.

The previous days had been similar to each other. Our routine was about the same; we would wake up at sunrise, force down a little food amidst the gruesome landscape, and then spend our time trying to fight the boredom of slowly drifting along, all the while waiting for the next round of terror that could be just around the next bend in the river.

Day 13 was different; right out of the box things took a downhill plunge.

Gin and I had just finished a paltry breakfast consisting of a shared can of peas and the last three slices of a loaf of bread that weren't spotted with mold.

Meanwhile, Jacob and Billy were arguing over the only chocolate granola bar that was left on the boat.

Gin suddenly turned to me, and looking rather forlorn, said. "Here we go again, look."

She pointed over my right shoulder at a boat approaching in the distance.

"Boys, get ready, there's another boat coming," I warned them.

Billy quickly snapped the granola bar in half, crammed one piece in his mouth, and tossed the other piece to Jacob.

"Everyone get down, like before," I said, reaching for my rifle.

As the possible new threat came nearer, we could see only one person in the substantially larger boat. It was a man, and he didn't seem to be in any distress.

"There could be more than just the one we can see, others might be hiding, same rules apply as before, if we have to shoot, shoot to kill and worry about head shots later," I said, reminding my crew of our first encounter with the woman and the two zombies.

With the stranger's boat upon us, he cut the inboard engine of his large cabin cruiser and shouted.

"Ahoy, ahoy there!"

I returned his greeting by shouting back.

"Ahoy to you stranger!"

The man looked to be about six feet tall, rather husky, with short white hair and a well-groomed white beard. I estimated him to be somewhere in his late fifty's or early sixties.

He cast a rope into our boat as his vessel slowly drifted along our starboard side.

"Tie it off boy," he said, as Jacob grabbed the rope. "We'll all compare notes, if that's okay with you folks?"

"Are you alone?" I inquired, as I stood up, my rifle at my side, pointing in his direction.

"Just me, myself, and I," he replied, putting his hands on the side of his boat and leaning in our direction.

"Where you folks from?" The bearded man asked cheerfully.

"Saint Louis," I answered with a smile, as my finger slowly slid closer to my rifle's trigger.

This man wasn't acting like you would expect someone to act in the middle of a "Zombie Apocalypse", especially an apocalypse that had started less than two weeks earlier.

"All the way from Saint Louie, you must have seen some things along the way," he said, not really seeming too concerned as his eyes scanned back and forth checking out our boat.

"That's right, we've seen some things, what's your name, and where did
you
come from?" I asked him still smiling.

"That's a really nice trophy you got there," the man said, pointing to the teeth sticking in our boat motor. "I'd like to have that trophy."

Noticing his behavior getting even odder, I replied.

"You wouldn't want to get it the way we got it."

"Well I recon not, if you say so," he muttered softly.

"Where did you say you're from," I asked again, becoming even more suspicious.

"From a little place north of here, called Friars Point Mississippi, you don't want to go there, it's crawling with those dead people."

"We call them eaters," Jacob said smiling.

"Eaters you say! Well speaking of food, you folk's hungry; don't see how you can have much food in that little boat of yours. I've got plenty of food, MRE's."

"MRE's?" Jacob asked, as he turned toward Billy for an answer.

Billy shrugged his shoulders and answered. "I don't know!"

Wondering why this stranger, that we had only just met, would want to share his food with us so readily, I answered Jacobs's question.

"Meals-Ready-to-Eat is what it stands for, they're mainly made for the military."

"That's right, meals ready to eat, I got plenty of meals ready to eat, got some cooking below as we speak," the man said, pointing to the hold of his boat.

"Say those are some mighty fine looking weapons you got there,
I'd
like to have those weapons," he announced giddily.

I glanced over at my two boys and my wife, and I saw that Jacob had already slung his carbine over his shoulder, and Billy had sat the butt stock of his rifle on one of the sleeping bags we had tied to the front of the boat and was holding onto his gun by the barrel.

Although her pistol was still pointing in the general direction of our newfound
friend
, Gin had lowered it, and didn't look ready to handle any surprises.

They all had been lulled into what could be a false sense of security, by this man's cheerful and generous demeanor.

"Sorry, we don't have any to spare, no spare ammunition either. Don't you have a gun?" I asked suspiciously.

"No gun, just a fishing knife, I was fishing when all this started, don't normally bring a gun with me when I'm fishing."

"I'm Jack, this is my wife Gin, and my two boys, Billy and Jacob. I didn't catch your name."

The smile sank from the man's face, his voice lowered, and he said slowly.

"How old is your woman, I'd like to have that woman."

With that statement, he turned away from me for just a moment.

Keep in mind, after several days of drifting down the river and having to endure the sight of bloated dead bodies constantly floating around me, along with the accompanying stench of their rotting flesh. After just barely surviving the attacking zombies that were jumping off the bridge into our boat in the middle of the night. Seeing a suicide boat filled with the dead bodies of whole families at least once every day (and usually more). Not to mention the memories of seeing our neighbors butchered on our patio door, and having to put one of them down as if she was a mad dog, and having to leave Jacob's best friend Norton and his father Joe, battling a large rabble of assailing zombies in their front yard and not being able to help them.

I was in no mood to play this guy's game.

I had already shouldered my AK-47 as the man was turning back to face me. He clumsily tried to shield the pistol he had in his left hand.

"If you have to know my name," he shouted. "It's your worst nightmare!"

I'll never forget the surprised look on his face, when he completed his turn and saw me standing there staring at him through the iron sights of my Romanian manufactured assault rifle.

Before the man could react, I pressed the trigger toward the rear of the gun, and fired a shot that hit him in his left lung.

Then rapidly, I fired another, and then another, and another, and another, and the man fell back onto the deck of his boat, dead and riddled with bullet holes.

Jacob had tied our boats together with the rope the crazed man had tossed to him, so it was rather easy for me to jump onto his vessel and send one more round crashing into his forehead, which exited through the back of his head and splintered the wooden deck below, destroying his brain and making sure he wouldn't reanimate.

Having to shoot, hit, or run over humans or sub-humans, was becoming the norm. Therefore, I figured with the crazy way this man was acting, plus the fact that he was in the process of pulling a gun on us, a gun that earlier he had claimed not to have, one more self-defense killing wouldn't matter much in the long run.

After shooting the stranger in the head, I quickly surveyed the deck of his boat to make sure no other threats were present.

When I turned toward Billy and Jacob, they were standing there staring at me with very confused looks on their faces.

From their position in our boat, they could not see the gun the man had picked up. Gin caught a glimpse of the gun, but everything happened so fast, that by the time she reacted to what was happening, it was over.

Jacob then asked. "Why did you do that dad?"

Gin quickly spoke up.

"Because it had to be done, he wasn't normal."

"He seemed normal to me; didn't he seem normal to you Billy?"

"He seemed a little weird," Billy retorted.

"He also lied to us," I said. "He said he didn't have a gun, that's a 1911 Colt .45 he's still clutching in his hand, and here's another one right here by the cabin door." I said, as I picked up the second pistol and shoved it into one of the large cargo pockets of my multi-cam pants.

"He may have lied about being alone too, so stay alert. I'm going to check down in the cabin."

I slowly eased down the three wooden steps that led down to the cabin below deck. The cabin door was ajar; allowing the aroma of what the bearded man that I had just killed had called his MRE's that were still cooking on a small propane stove, to seep out into the claustrophobic hallway where I stood. Before I entered the cabin I caught a whiff of the simmering meal inside and thought, "
we're going to have a delicious warm meal for breakfast for a change
."

However, when I peeked inside the cabin through the half-inch gap provided by the partially opened door, a nightmare that I had not even dared to imagine confronted me. I had suspected that the man from Friars Point Mississippi wasn't alone, but nothing could have prepared me for what I found in the cabin of this lunatic's boat.

Before me, was a hideous sight, the maggot infested torso's of a woman and three children, a girl about sixteen years old, a boy around twelve, and another girl maybe four years old, all dead with their body parts also teeming with maggots separated and stacked neatly in piles around the cabin which was overrun with flies.

It was apparent that they were the man's, meals ready to eat. He had been carving on them with a set of butcher knives and a carpenters hand saw, for some time it seemed.

Pieces of them that he had cut up like round steaks, were still sizzling in a large frying pan on the stove, emitting the scent that just moments before had titillated my taste buds, but after finding that the slaughtered humans were the source of the once pleasant smell, my now queasy stomach churned with every inhaled breath.

What was left of their bodies, were starting to decompose. This is probably the reason that this maniac interrupted his breakfast. He saw us and decided he needed fresher meat.

Until that moment, I had never smelled the odor of human meat being cooked. If not for the reeking of all of the rotting and bloated bodies that had been floating around us for almost two weeks, not to mention the carnage that we had seen and the atrocities that we had been forced to commit leading up to this horrific scene, I probably would have puked my guts out right then and there on the floor of that boat's cabin.

I could hear footsteps on deck, so I quickly glanced around the cabin.

"There's nothing we need in here," I said aloud to myself as I climbed back up the steps to the deck.

"Is everything all right," Gin yelled.

As I emerged from the cabin, Jacob and Billy were looking at the dead man lying on the deck.

"Don't go down there," I said.

"Why not," Jacob asked.

"Because it's worse than our kitchen, that's why, so don't go down there, get it?" I answered gruffly.