ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (17 page)

"Still, we're going to have to fight our way through those eaters, the tall brush surrounds the farmhouse and barn, and where it is cleared, there are fences. We don't want to be caught trying to climb a fence, and we know how hard it is walking, not to mention, running through the undergrowth. I think our best bet is to meet them head on, and use these sickles, not our guns, to chop our way through them," I suggested. "Unless someone has a better idea?"

No one offered an alternative to my plan, so we prepared to make our escape from the barn, and hopefully trek back to the Morphadite in one piece.

"Sling your rifles over your shoulders like this," I said as I demonstrated how. "We're only going to use our guns if we absolutely have too. We know gunfire attracts eaters quickly, and we already have enough of them to deal with as it is." I maintained, as I loosened my sling, and slid my head and arm into the gap between the rifle and the sling, mounting my AK-47 on my back.

I walked with resolve toward the door we had slated to be our exit point.

"Let's go," I ordered. "We'll line up in front of the door, I'll go out first, Jacob, second, honey, you go third, and Billy you bring up the rear, and keep an eye on your mother," I demanded.

We took our positions by the side door of the barn, lining up as I had instructed, and on the count of three, I shoved hard on the rickety wooden door, accidently folding it back far enough to break the top hinge off. This led to a loud crash, as the old wooden door, slammed into the side of the barn, resulting in the bottom hinge also tearing loose from the doorjamb.

Needless to say, the inadvertent noise of the door being ripped off its hinge's and subsequently smashing into the side of the barn, instantly attracted the attention of every one of the zombies that had been silently wandering around the barn aimlessly.

The usual snarling, snapping, and drooling ensued, the attack commenced, and our second land battle was on. Only this time, our van was not sitting thirty feet away in the driveway, this time, five hundred yards of dense vegetation separated us from the safety of our boat that was moored on the river that we had grown to hate, but hate it or not, we were still going to disparately try to return to it.

The first of the undead that tried to attack me came at me from my right side. It was a young woman, while living she had matured to somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five years, she had blonde hair and green eyes, however, they were severely bloodshot now. She was average height for a girl, about five feet, three inches tall. She was just the right height, that when I swung my sickle horizontally at her, I didn't have to bend, or stretch, or reach up or down. I just swung the sickle, in a very natural swing, like a pimp might backhand one of his whores in his stable, and hewed her head off, slicing right through the very middle of her neck, and dropping both her head and her body to the ground.

Her head rolled in front of me, and settled on her right cheek, she looked up at me from the ground, still working her jaws, and not giving up her attempt to feast upon me, just like Julie our former neighbor had done several days earlier on our kitchen floor.

"
Not a bad cut, for a rusty sickle
," I thought, as I kicked her severed head out of my way, knocking her front teeth down what was left of her throat at the same time.

Billy had taken another approach to using his sickle. I turned to check on my family, after my first kill, and saw that he had driven the point of his farming implement into the crown of a zombie's skull. The result of which was twofold.

First, the point of the sickle had penetrated clear through zombie's head, and seemed to be lodged somewhere in the attacker's throat. I could see Billy was having a hard time lifting the sickle vertically out of the now falling undead killer, as his weapon was stuck in the zombies head.

Second, before I could render him any assistance, he grabbed the sickle with both hands and tugged hard on the handle back toward his stomach, pulling the rusty concave blade through the face of his advisory, splitting it down the middle and exposing its now semi-divided brain along with a multitude of dark red liquid that splattered onto the front of his pants, covering him with zombie juices.

The hewing, slicing, and stabbing, was over in a remarkably short period, one or two minutes and when we left the farm, the body count was at eleven, the sickles had done their job well.

On the way back to the river, we encountered four more of the diseased, homicidal maniacs, and dispatched them summarily.

Arriving back at our boat, we found it exactly the way we had left it.

"Jump in and let's get going, before more of them show up," Gin said with a sigh of relief. "I never thought I'd be glad to see this stinking river again!" She said, shaking her head.

"It wasn't that bad mom, we went through those eaters pretty quick," Jacob jeered happily.

"Don't get cocky son, remember, the eaters only have to get lucky once, like the one that managed to crawl into the boat, we have to get lucky every time!" I countered with as much passion in my voice as I could muster.

Before climbing into the Morphadite, I reached down, and picked up a smooth round rock from the bank.

"Here, Jacob catch!"

"What's this for?" he asked.

"It's to sharpen our sickles," I replied.

I picked up the anchor and placed it on the bow. I pushed the boat away from the bank and using the head of one of the numerous corpses that had washed to the shore all along the river as a step I jumped into the boat.

My weight shoved the cadaver's face into the mud as the toe of my boot peeled off a chunk of hair and scalp that stuck in the tread of my boot sole.

"Start it up Billy, and let's get out of here," I prompted, flipping the rotting toupee from my foot before stepping onto the deck of the Morphadite.

Billy started the motor and backed the boat away from the riverbank. About twenty yards out, he turned the boat to the starboard side and crammed the shift lever into its forward position, and we slowly made our way to the middle of the river once more.

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GROUP THERAPY

"Hey dad, what do you think happened to that horse?" Jacob asked, looking rather dejected.

"I guess it'll be all right. I managed to rip the barn door off, so it had a way to get out of the barn. We killed all the eaters in the immediate area, so it probably left the barn in search of water; it's most likely fine," I said, trying to cheer Jake up.

"I hope so. How could anyone do that to an animal?" Jacob inquired, still looking forlorn.

"I doubt if they did it on purpose. Remember how fast this whole thing started, nobody had much time to do anything except run for their lives," I maintained. "That's what we did."

"The horse is fine," Billy interrupted. "It's just fine."

Then Gin added.

"We'll never really know for sure, but animals are very resourceful and resilient. I bet right now that horse is drinking water and getting its fill of grass. One thing is for sure, he's not on this horrible river like us."

"The river didn't seem like such a bad idea when we were in that barn honey, now did it?" I said sarcastically, reminding her of our latest close encounter with the Grim Reaper.

"No it didn't, but I still don't have to like this river, and I don't care what you say, I'm never going to get used to this smell. This river stinks!" she snapped while holding her nose, giving her voice an adenoidal tone.

"Well you won't have to put up with the smell on the river for too much longer. Tomorrow I'm going to break out the GPS and see exactly where we are, and how much farther it is to Vicksburg," I said, growing tired of her complaining. After all, it wasn't helping any and certainly wasn't doing anything to diminish to odor the river was emitting. But I didn't want to start an argument, things were bad enough without us fighting among ourselves. So I chose to change the subject and hoped that she would follow my lead, which she did.

The next morning after everyone was awake; I dug through our stuff and found the GPS device that I had made sure to bring along with us. I turned the mechanism on, and was glad to see that it had held a charge and was operating with seventy-six percent of its battery life left. After making a few calculations and formulating an interim plan, I made an announcement.

"We should be able to pick up some kind of a vehicle in Vicksburg, if not; Tallulah is just west of there fifteen miles or so down interstate twenty. Vicksburg is right on the river, and it should be a short walk into town. I can't see not being able to find something to drive in one of those towns. By my estimate we should reach Vicksburg some time tomorrow afternoon, barring any kind of delay."

"You mean like pirates," Jacob asked.

"Yes!" I said. "Like pirates."

"Or like getting killed," Billy interjected.

"Thanks for the positive input Billy," Gin said sarcastically.

Ignoring his mother's comment, he asked.

"Hey dad, I noticed something about the eaters. They always seem to be traveling in groups. The only one we've seen not with another eater was our neighbor Jon, and it wasn't long after he arrived at our house that Julie showed up at our patio door. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know, but you're right," I answered. "We've seen a couple of massive groups on the riverbanks. At the farmhouse, there was a bunch of them. Then on the way back to the boat, there was that group of four of them."

"Two on the road on the way to launch the boat," Gin quickly divulged.

"Don't forget the two at the boat launch standing behind the tree. I saved dad remember," Jacob proudly added.

"Maybe it all goes back to what the CDC was saying about the virus possibly being from feral dogs. We know the eaters are afraid of water, like hydrophobia," I reminded.

"Yeah, they're funny when they try to swim," Jacob said laughing.

"They're not so funny when they end up in our boat, are they?" Billy fumed, recalling Jacob nearly being bitten.

"If it is the feral dog syndrome, maybe it's like wolves, and there's some kind of pack mentality that has evolved. Whether it's pack mentality or a mutated strain of the disease, or maybe they just like each other's company. We might be able to use the group therapy thing to our advantage at some point," I mentioned.

"How are we going to do that?" Gin asked, tilting her head to the side and raising her eyebrows.

"I'm not sure right now honey," I answered. "But let's keep it in mind anyway; the more we know about our enemy the better we'll be able to fight them."

Gin nodded her head in agreement.

"We know they're afraid of water, and they like to travel in packs," she said.

"They have pretty good hearing," Billy interjected once more.

"They like to eat people, it's lucky for us that they're kind of slow and off balance most of the time," Jacob quipped.

"Especially lucky for you," Billy said sarcastically, again reminding his brother of his near encounter with a gruesome death.

"Anything we can think of that might help us fight off these monsters we need to consider, so keep thinking, and in the mean time let's sharpen our sickles, it's only a matter of hours before we get to Vicksburg and I'm sure we're not going to have time to do it there," I maintained. "We're going to need these sickles to be sharp until we can find something better if we're going to make it to Texas."

We settled down and shared the rock that I had picked up to sharpen our sickles. The sickles had worked pretty well at the farmhouse, and we really didn't need them much sharper than they already were. Even though they were old and rusty, the farmer had maintained them well enough to be able to split a zombie's skull rather efficiently with them. But, I wanted to give everyone something to do for awhile to keep their minds occupied with something other than the smell of the river, and the memories of the horrors that we had encountered along the way.

The rest of the day dragged sluggishly by, as did most of the days that had preceded it. All of us had a sense of joy and relief when the days ended and we could lie down and close our eyes for a few hours, and hopefully dream of more pleasant times in the past, and maybe even in the future.