ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (14 page)

More and more shots were forthcoming as I watched all three of the men do a spastic pirate jig prior to collapsing on the deck of their boat as they were peppered with projectiles spewing from the guns of "my group" as the leader of the would be pirates called them.

When the gunfire stopped, Billy quickly spoke up.

"You said to shoot first!"

"Yes I did. You all did well, they were going to take everything we have, and then probably kill us too! Even if they had let us go, it would have been the same as a death sentence to be left out here without food, water, or weapons," I proposed.

"Now we can take their stuff," Jake added.

"Exactly," Gin agreed.

"Let's go on board and take a look around, Gin you stay here and cover us, there could be more of them on that boat." I said, to Gin displeasure.

"I always have to stay in the boat," Gin remarked, sadly.

"Trust me; it's
always
safer in the boat," I replied in a wittily incisive manner.

"Boys kill anything that moves, and don't forget to give these fine gentlemen their well deserved head shots," I said without remorse.

We climbed aboard the pirate vessel, and after making sure that the pirates wouldn't bother us again by returning from the dead, we began to inventory their stockpile of ill gotten gains.

"I think these guys had been at this from the beginning, look at all this stuff, clothes, guns, jewelry, gas cans, food, and several marine flare guns, not to mention everything else," I elaborated.

Along with many items we acquired from the pirate ship, we salvaged all of their weapons, and even more importantly, we obtained a plethora of ammunition that they most likely confiscated (took at gunpoint) from others on the river which were not quite as quick on the trigger as Billy, Jake, and Gin.

We loaded as much of the pirate's booty as we had space for, including a couple of extra containers of fuel.

"That's it dad, we don't have any more room, at all," Billy said, while he bounced up and down on a pile of blankets, trying to shove them down below the edge of the boat without much success.

"One more thing," I shouted, from the far side of the soon to be ghost ship.

Picking up a nearby gasoline container, I proceeded to remove the cap and splash gas on and around the remaining piles of goods we were leaving behind. I then opened several of the plastic gas containers that were stored on deck, and tossed them onto various parts of the pirate ship. Then I grabbed one of the flare guns and a couple packs of flares, and I rejoined Gin and the boys on our boat.

Upon returning to our boat, I maneuvered the Morphadite around the pirate's craft, turned our motor off, and again we began to drift.

However, this time I didn't shoot below the waterline to sink the boat, this time I loaded the newly procured flare gun, and fired a bright red emergency flare onto the gasoline soaked deck of the freebooter's vessel.

When the gasoline ignited, we heard a loud swishing roar as a large black and orange mushroom cloud of smoke and fire bellowed into the sky. We were approximately forty yards away from the flame, yet we had to shield ourselves from the uncomfortable heat we could feel reflecting off our skin.

Soon the whole ship was totally engulfed in a glowing yellow-orange fire, which produced a black sooty smoke that rose high into the air.

The flaming boat was anchored in the middle of the Mississippi River, and it would be out of our sight in less than an hour.

However, we could see for many miles, the pillar of black smoke produced by the burning fiberglass and plastic construction of the larger boat that had risen into the clouds. Until finally, the trees along the riverbank obscured our vision of the distant smoke column in the sky.

You might wonder why I would choose to stay in the smaller Morphadite boat to complete our journey south, instead of commandeering one of the larger crafts that we had acquired access to along the way.

The answer is that most of the boats that we encountered were either disease infested, (not that the Morphadite necessarily wasn't after some of our encounters) which most of them were, or suicide boats which psychologically we wanted no part of, or they were just too big and less maneuverable even though they were faster than our small boat. But considering that most of the time, speed was not a great concern to us, and we were already very familiar with our own boat, I felt it made more sense to stay on the Morphadite. You know, "
if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
"

We fought the boredom of the rest of the day's journey by sorting through and separating the pirate's booty we had appropriated earlier that day. Then we settled into our usual ritual of preparing for sleep as the grayness of dusk fell upon us once more.

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TARGET PRACTICE

The next morning soon arrived, and we awoke feeling restricted in the midst of the massive stockpile of supplies we had scavenged from the river pirate's boat, and along with other things such as the chill in the air, and the never-ending foul smell of the river, had helped produce a rather uncomfortable night's sleep for all of us.

We ate our breakfast cramped among our newly obtained hoard of resources, each of us secretly wondering how we were going to be able to finish this boat ride in such constricted living quarters.

Jacob was the first to speak up.

"I think we might have over done it," he said, pointing to the large pile of pirate weapons.

"More than just the guns," Gin added.

"We don't have any room to move around, we didn't have much room to begin with, and now we don't have any," Billy stressed, throwing the empty can of roast beef he'd eaten for breakfast into the river.

"You're right, we did over do it, so let's fix it," I said, as I picked up a bundle of blankets and tossed them into the water."

"We've only got a few more days on the river, and we can't carry all of this stuff once we leave the boat. So let's pitch a lot of it overboard and only keep the food and anything that's absolutely essential," I instructed, as I hurled more junk over the side.

"The guns too?" Billy asked.

"No, not yet, keep the guns and ammo, I have an idea," I answered.

We spent the next hour going through our supplies, separating it and flinging whatever we deemed unnecessary into the Mississippi.

"That's better, I feel like I can breathe again, I mean if it weren't for the smell," Gin said, sprawling out over one of the passenger seats.

"Much better," Jacob agreed, as he too stretched out his legs.

Billy leaned back against the boat's windshield and pointing to the stack of firearms and ammunition, he then asked.

"What about your idea dad? We still have all of this ammo and all of these guns, and they're heavier and harder to carry than most of the things we just threw out of the boat. What are we going to do with them?"

Having thought of this idea the night before while mostly unsuccessfully trying to sleep on a mound of miscellaneous items, I answered his question.

"I think we should pick the guns that we're going to take with us, most of which we brought from home, keep as much ammo for those guns as we can possibly carry, and use the rest of the guns and ammo for target practice."

"You mean you're going to let me shoot at the eaters on the river bank?" Jacob giddily piped up.

"That's right, we're going to use up the spare ammunition shooting at eaters and anything else that looks like it needs to be shot," I happily answered.

"Cool," Billy said. "But I thought you wanted to save our ammo for when we really needed it, and didn't want to attract any undue attention to ourselves?"

"That was before the pirate ship," I replied. "We have tons of ammo now, way more than we can possibly carry without a vehicle. And we don't know how long it will be, or how far we'll have to go before we can commandeer one.

As for attracting attention, we'll probably attract so many eaters to the riverbanks and surrounding areas by firing the guns, that anyone that's out to get us is going to have their hands full with all of the crazed eaters running around.

Besides you can never practice too much, you know what they say, practice makes perfect.

Plus, it will give us something to do instead of being bored to death for the next couple of days."

We spent some time going through the heaped hodgepodge of weapons we had collected from the pirate's boat.

First, we separated the rifles from the pistols, and then we paired them with the proper ammunition for each gun.

Then we chose the weapons we wanted to shoot, and took turns picking targets for each other.

"Remember, it counts as a miss if you don't hit them in the head," Jacob said, taunting Billy.

"I never miss! Haven't you been watching?" Billy replied jokingly.

"Keep an eye on the one with the red hunting cap," Billy said, as he leaned the barrel of the M1 carbine he had chosen to shoot, on the side of the boat.

"Boom!"

The muzzle blast of the gun sounded seconds before the report of the powerful military rifle echoed back to us off the cliff face near the far riverbank.

The zombie dropped to the water saturated ground by the edge of the river as its red hunting hat was ripped from its head and fell onto the muddy terra firma as well, along with chunks of its brain, hair, scalp, and skull (possibly a couple of teeth too).

"That's five for me. Who's next?" Billy gloated.

"Anyone can do that using the boat as a rest. Stand up and shoot like a man, off-hand, like this," Jacob pointed out, as he stood up, shouldered a world war two bolt action rifle, and blew the top of an zombies head clean off.

"Did you see that, the bullet lifted the top of its skull off like a trap door, and ejected part of its brain out and onto that other eater?" Jacob announced as he laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, I saw it, that was nothing watch this," Billy insisted as he took aim at another zombie.

The boys bantered back and forth shooting the undead that wandered the riverbanks and turning our first practice session into somewhat of a competition resembling the game of H.O.R.S.E.!

"Okay, my turn," Gin said, standing, and raising the Winchester 30-30 lever action rifle she had picked.

"Pick out a target for me honey, don't make it too hard!"

"Too hard?" I answered. "You did pretty well shooting at those pirates; you shot them before I even knew what happened."

"Yes, but they were a lot closer than these eaters are, and they didn't have all of those flies swarming around them," Gin replied with a smile. "I think that makes them harder to hit."

"Okay hit the fat girl; she should be easy to drop!" I said laughing.

"Very funny, her head is still pretty small from this distance," Gin retorted, making a pre-shot excuse just in case she missed.

"All of their heads are small from this distance mom, that's what makes it fun!" Jacob remarked as he pressed the trigger back on his rifle and harvested another zombie.

"No, fun is when I hit them, that's when it's fun for me," Gin pointed out.

"Boom!"

The lever action rifle reeled Gin back.

"This thing kicks more than I thought it would," Gin claimed, lowering the rifle and rubbing her shoulder. "I think I like shooting the pistols better."

"Maybe, but you need to learn how to shoot as many guns as you can, you never know when we might have to employ a
battlefield pick-up
," I stated, hoping she would understand that philosophy.

"You need the practice mom, you missed the fat chick," Jacob said, pointing out the obvious.

"You were holding the gun wrong, you weren't holding it on your shoulder right," Billy instructed as he proceeded to demonstrate.

"See like this, with the butt of the gun seated snuggly in the small of your shoulder."

"I guess all those trips to the range paid off," I boasted, watching Billy instruct his mother in the art of properly holding a rifle.