ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (16 page)

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FOOD SHORTAGE

We initially thought the damage was minimal from the zombie that had boarded the Morphadite uninvited, and through its ultimate demise had rendered part of our food supply uneatable.

However, as we foraged through the remainder of our stores, we found that the diseased fluid secreted on them from the marauding zombie had contaminated even the cans.

We couldn't open them with the John Wayne can opener without pushing the now dried emission into the contents of the can.

We surely didn't want to wash the cans off in the river, and we didn't want to assume that washing the cans with what was left of our drinking water would clean them well enough to insure our safety.

"I can only find two cans of food that for sure have not been affected by that eater," Gin said, as she held up two cans of green beans for inspection.

"Then get rid of everything else, throw it in the river," I said with disgust.

"Jacob, have you still been keeping track of how many days we have left on the river?" I asked.

"Yes dad, about two and a half, to three days left," he answered.

Gin broke in.

"We can't go three days without food! What are we going to do?"

"We're going to have to make an unscheduled stop. As soon as we see the next house, we'll stop and see what we can find," I replied in answer to her question.

After making the decision to essentially loot the next house we saw along the way, the river carried us along for nearly an hour before Billy stood up, pointed at a house, and shouted.

"Hey, there's a house, way over there."

It was a large white farmhouse setting back from the river about five hundred yards and partially obscured by a few trees, and we were about a mile from the point that we would want to land our boat.

"Quick!" I said. "Grab a gun and start shooting."

Looking around at both riverbanks and seeing no zombies (which was rare indeed), Jacob asked. "Shoot at what, I don't see any eaters?"

"Just shoot, the sound will draw all of the eaters in the area in this direction," I pointed out, just before I shot several shots into the air. "Then we'll quietly float past them and dock the Morphadite perpendicular to the farmhouse," I stated as I fired a few more rounds.

Billy and Jacob joined me in my noise making effort, followed by Gin, and for the next couple of minutes the four of us fired volley after volley into the air creating deafening cannon like reports. Each volley thundered along the rivers channel summoning any roving zombies that were within earshot to our location.

"Enough!" I yelled, "Hopefully that will do the trick."

"Now we'll just quietly float down the river past all the eaters that are investigating where that sound came from," I said.

"I hope you're right," Gin said apprehensively.

"It should work, every time we've shot at them, no matter how many we put down, more keep showing up," I concluded confidently.

"It won't be too long before we find out," Billy added.

As Billy had predicted, it wasn't long before we were cautiously approaching the riverbank and looking for a suitable place that the Morphadite could be moored.

"This looks like a good spot, not too steep and the current is slow here, and no eaters in sight, hand me the anchor and I'll tie it off short," I said, jumping out of the boat onto the stone speckled sandy bank.

"Looks like the noise making ploy worked dad," Billy said quietly. "I don't see any eaters around here."

"Keep an eye out for them anyway," I warned. "You know as well as I do that just because we don't see any of them, that doesn't mean that there isn't one or two of them or even more lurking in the area."

"Let's gun up people, and stay quiet while we're doing it," I ordered, using my best ex-marine whisper.

"Everyone strap on your pistols, Billy, you and I will bring the AKs and one drum magazine each. Jake, you bring that 9mm Sub-2000 you're so handy with and at least two spare high cap magazines. Honey, just bring your pistol and a couple of magazines, and you can carry the backpacks," I ordered again.

Outfitted, and on the march, our small band trudged through the thick knee-high brush toward the farmhouse in the distance.

"I'm just carrying these empty packs, and this walk is wearing me out," Gin said, in her best complaining tone.

"This is nothing; wait until we abandon the boat in a couple of days, then we'll be on foot until we can find some other means of traveling. With a lot more to carry than we have now," I explained, thinking after the fact that I probably shouldn't have mentioned the coming hardship to my wife, she was already starting to complain about walking with two
empty
backpacks.

"Thank God, we're almost there, I think your noise ploy definitely worked, we haven't seen one eater so far," Gin said softly.

"That's what I said back at the boat mom," Billy announced. As if there were a trophy for the first one to state the obvious.

"We don't want to draw attention to ourselves if we don't have to, so don't shoot any of them if you can help it. Use the butt of your rifles to smash in their skulls if we run into any and there aren't too many to deal with by hand," I whispered. "Maybe we can find a hand tool or something at the farmhouse to use as a weapon, something a little less noisy than our guns."

When we arrived at the front door of the house, it was standing wide open. I entered first, but not before giving Jacob strict instructions to stand watch outside, and not to enter the house, unless he heard a lot of gunfire coming from inside, or he saw zombies approaching, then Billy followed me in, and Gin hesitantly followed him.

The inside of the house looked like the people that had lived there had left in a hurry. That wasn't too surprising, I figured a lot of people left their homes in a hurry when all of this started. Nonetheless, we still needed to be very careful, we couldn't afford to assume that no one was living there, dead or alive.

"We need to stay together, and keep alert, we've got to watch our backs," I reminded them.

"It looks like that's the kitchen just ahead us through the next room. Most of these old farmhouses have a pantry, that's where we'll most likely find the food if there is any," Gin explained quietly.

She was right; the kitchen was straight ahead through the dining room which we were about to enter. A few more steps and we'd be in the kitchen.

"That's probably it, that door on the left with the broom beside it," Gin whispered softly, as she pointed to the door.

"Billy, you jerk the door open, and if there's an eater in there I'll clobber it with this," I said, as I snatched an iron skillet off the stove.

Lifting the heavy frying pan over my head, I signaled Billy to open the pantry door. He leaned forward and slowly turned the door handle, then quickly pulled it toward himself. The door opened slightly, and then slammed closed again as if it were spring loaded. My wife's eyes told me that she was frightened, as she proclaimed in a deep solemn tone not even trying to whisper.

"Something's in there!" she said.

"Who's there? Who's in there?" I asked in a stern yet low voice.

"Was that a growl?" Billy asked.

Gin answered quickly.

"That's what it sounded like to me, sounds like an eaters in there!"

"Billy," I said. "Pull as hard as you can, Gin you help him, ready, on three, one, two, three."

Billy and Gin tugged on the door handle with all of their might.

The door flew open, and upon seeing a dark red mucilaginous liquid smeared all around the mouth and running down the front of the large entity hiding in the shadowy darkness of the old farmhouse pantry. I swung the iron pan vertically down onto the top of its head; the pouring spout acted like a spearhead and effectively crushed a gaping cleft in the top of the skull of the oversized occupant loitering in the food closet.

"That's not blood all over his shirt," Billy revealed. "It looks like strawberry jam!"

"It is strawberry jam, there's the jar, between his legs," Gin said, pointing to a large jar nestled in the man's crotch.

"Doesn't look like that's the first jar of jam this guys eaten, he must weigh five hundred pounds. He's probably been hiding in here off and on since the outbreak began," I said, showing little or no remorse after butchering an innocent and defenseless citizen. "He couldn't hold the door closed because his hands were covered with jam.

"And he sounded like an eater because his mouth was full of it," Gin added as she scanned the shelves of the pantry for our much needed food.

"Well, better him than us, Billy can you step over this behemoth and reach what's left of the food in here?" I asked.

"I think so," he replied.

"Take it all, I don't want to have to do this anymore," Gin complained.

"You better get used to it, once we ditch the Morphadite, this will be standard operating procedure like it or not," I interjected. "This is going to be our way of life from now on."

Just as Billy cleared the last shelf in the pantry, Jacob appeared at the kitchen door.

"They're coming," he whispered.

"How many are there?" I asked.

"A herd of at least ten, coming from the same direction we came from."

"You mean horde?" Billy scoffed.

"Herd, horde, whatever, they're coming," Jacob answered sharply still whispering.

"Did they see you?" I urgently asked.

"No, I don't think so," he answered, shaking his head.

"Quick, let's go out the back door," I blurted out, probably a little too loud.

We dashed out of the kitchen, and through the screened-in porch that led outside to the backyard. The barn was only about fifty yards from the back door of the house. So we sprinted across the yard and through the three-foot wide opening between the two large sliding doors on the barn.

"Close the door, hurry!" Gin puffed, trying to catch her breath.

A loud rusty squeak accompanied the diminishing gap between the two barn doors, as Billy and Jacob quickly pushed the mammoth wooden door closed.

"They must have heard that, it couldn't have been much louder," I concluded.

"Nothing we can do about it now," Billy asserted, shrugging his shoulders.

"Right," I agreed. "Let's check out this barn and make sure there are no eaters in here!"

As he pointed to several rusty hand sickles with sun bleached and worn handles hanging at eye level on the wall of the barn. Jacob apprised us of their presents.

"Look at these!" he said.

"That's just what we're looking for, everybody grab one," I insisted, tossing my frying pan onto a nearby bale of hay.

With sickles in hand, we searched the barn for any rogue zombies that might be lurking there.

"No eaters dad, but look at this," Billy directed, as he motioned for me to look into one of the animal stalls.

The barn was devoid of life, or death, except for one starving horse, and of course us.

The horse had been locked in the stall without any food or water, and left there by its owner, most likely from the first day the apocalypse started.

"What are we going to do with it?" Jacob asked.

"I don't know, I've never owned a horse," I replied. "Look around, there must be some food in here that it will eat, what's in those sacks over there?" I said, pointing to a pile of neatly stacked gunnysacks.

Billy pulled his knife from its sheath, and stabbed it into one of the sacks.

"Its oats, horses eat oats don't they?" He asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yes!" Gin responded. "Horses eat oats!"

Billy put his knife back into its sheath, and proceeded to lift the opened sack, and throw it into the horse's stall. The starving horse slowly ambled over to the open gunnysack, and began to feast on the first meal it had seen in almost two weeks.

"Billy, open the stall so it can leave when it's ready, it needs water and we don't have any in here. When it leaves the barn it'll find some outside."

"Speaking of leaving the barn," Jacob announced. "I don't think that's going to be so easy, the eaters did hear the door squeak, and now they're right outside."

I rushed over and peeked through a crack in the wooden slats of the barns siding.

"Looks like all of them followed the sound, but I don't think they know we're in here yet," I whispered. "That means we have the element of surprise on our side."

Looking around the barn, almost in a panicked state, Gin asked. "Are those big doors the only way out?"

"There should be a smaller, regular door somewhere, so the farmer can enter the barn without having to wrestle with those big doors every time he goes in or out."

"It's over there, over in the corner, I saw it when we first came in, and it opens to the side of the barn, close to the front," Jacob informed us, pointing to the corner of the barn.