ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (19 page)

As we pulled out of the parking lot and made our way onto old U.S. 80, I handed Gin the GPS and said. "Turn it on and let's see how far it is to the Texas boarder."

As our navigational device booted up, a sign signaling our approach to interstate twenty appeared.

Just at that moment, a large brown dog leaped onto the hood of our vehicle snarling and barking at us on the other side of the windshield. Then another dog joined the first one on the hood of our Hummer, viciously snarling and barking, and dripping saliva as well.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I could see more dogs running behind our truck, twenty, maybe thirty of them.

"They're over here too!" Gin screamed, as a large mange covered German Sheppard bounced off the door on her side in an attempt to get at her.

That's when I heard the mini-gun's zipper like sound, as the three thousand rounds per minute weapon laid waste to the pack of dogs that trailed behind us.

The dogs to the side of us, and the dogs on the hood, were too close to the vehicle for the gun to be of any use.

Vertical stops on the mini-gun's mount, put there to prevent the gun from chopping through parts of the Hummer, also prevented the gun from tilting down far enough vertically to get a sight picture on the attacking cur's positions.

The engineers that had designed the turret could not have imagined that the operators would be fighting off a pack of vicious dogs at point blank range, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

"Grab something and hold on!" I yelled to everyone.

Then I hit the brake sharply, sending the two dogs that were standing on the hood, flying off onto the road in front of us. Then quickly removing my foot from the brake and stomping on the accelerator pedal, the massive Hummer plowed into the feral dogs, knocking both of them ten or so feet in front of the mammoth truck's bumper.

Then as the heavy vehicle rolled over the ferocious canines, everyone aboard heard the bones of the animals being crushed and broken as they tumbled beneath our truck.

The dog's broken and splintered bones penetrated their skin, some of which was ripped from their bodies as the exposed metal on the underside of the truck tore away pieces of bare muscle and flesh. Then the mutilated dogs were spewed out the back, coming to rest in the middle of the road, in an unrecognizable blood soaked and hair infused heap of bones, guts, and skin.

I veered back and forth across the road, bumping into the feral dogs that continued to menace us from the sides of our vehicle, slightly injuring a few of them and causing them to fall behind.

This enabled Billy, using short bursts of fire from the mini-gun, and Jacob, who had begun shooting at them through the back windows with his carbine, to picked them off one at a time along with other stragglers of the pack that were struggling to keep up, yet still had not given up their pursuit of us.

As the Hummer gained speed, tired and out of breath, the remnants of the decimated but yet still dangerous feral dog pack, trailed further and further behind us.

"Holy shit!" Gin gasped. "That was close, are you boys all right?"

"Were fine, but I used at least half of the mini-gun's ammo," Billy answered.

"Well, get ready to use the rest of it if you have to!" I said. "In all the excitement we missed our turn, we've got to turn around and go back."

Gin shaking her head, said. "I don't think that's such a great idea."

"We don't have a choice, interstate twenty is back there, if we turn around now we might be able to catch them by surprise while they're still worn-out and haven't had time to regroup," I insisted. "We've got to go back at some point, and our best chance of surviving another attack is to go back right now!"

I pulled the Hummer to the left side of the road and came to a stop with the left front tire just slightly on the shoulder; I put it in reverse and slowly backed up while turning the steering wheel to the right, making sure not to allow the front tire to go down too far into the ditch. When we were perpendicular to the road with the back tires about to go onto the opposite shoulder, I stopped, changed gears, turned the wheel to the left, and we proceeded to return to interstate twenty and to the bridge that would take us into Louisiana.

"They've seen us, here they come again, honey speed up!" Gin urged nearing a panicked state.

"Hold on everyone, I'm going to ramming speed! Don't worry about shooting them unless they jump on the truck," I ordered; as I crammed my foot down on the little peddle on the right.

The Hummer engaged the two lead dogs head on at about fifty miles per hour, tearing their bodies to pieces and killing them instantly. The impact splattered portions of their blood and intestines across a wide path that encompassed several other canines, causing them to hesitate for a moment and rethink their attack.

That slight moment of hesitation, gave us the time we needed to break through their ranks and make it to the bridge.

Once safely on the bridge, and with the malicious mongrels behind us, we saw the feral dogs reorganize what was left of their pack, and amble back in the direction of Vicksburg.

"I
knew
there was something wrong back there!" Gin declared. "I'm starting to think the CDC might have been right about the feral dog connection and this disease."

"But why no eaters back there? It doesn't make any sense," I asserted.

"Maybe the eaters know the dogs have the same disease as they do so they're not interested in eating them, and they move on in search of something else to eat?" Jacob speculated.

"That didn't stop Julie from chowing down on Jon in our kitchen!" Billy argued.

"That's right," I said. "Jon was just as infected as Julie, and she didn't hesitate to make a meal of him. And how about those two female eaters you guys dusted off on the way to the river? They were eating a dog carcass on the road, of course we don't know if that dog was infected or not, but chances are it was."

"All dogs are probably infected," Gin then added. "Whatever the reason connection or not, the next time we don't see any eaters, I think we need to leave the area as soon as possible."

"I think you're right, the dogs are much faster than any eaters we've encountered so far, which makes them a lot more dangerous," I agreed. "So the shoot first rule applies double for dogs. You see a dog you kill it. Do you hear that boys?"

"We hear you dad, double for dogs," Jacob responded.

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ON TO TEXAS

We traveled west on interstate twenty for only a few miles, when we came to the town of Tallulah. There we decided to try to replenish our food supply before driving further west.

Not wanting to run the battery down on our GPS, we didn't use it for mile by mile directions, and not being familiar with the area, we took the first Tallulah exit off the interstate. That exit turned out to be the long way into the town.

However, that mistake did have an upside. The route took us all the way over to state highway eighty, and then past a cemetery that was infested with zombies. Not that zombie infestation is necessarily an upside by any stretch, but it did reveal to us that there was a good chance that no nomadic packs of feral dogs were in the vicinity. At least that was our theory.

"No feral dogs here," Gin stated.

"Not in the cemetery anyway," I replied, hoping that she was right and the whole town was free of roving packs of dogs.

"They're in groups!" Billy said, seeing several large throngs of zombies meandering through the cemetery.

"Just like all the others, they're always in a group," Jacob acknowledged in agreement.

Shortly after passing the graveyard, we found ourselves crossing a small bridge that led into a residential area.

"This looks like the perfect place to scavenge for food," I said. "But we'll go a little bit further from the cemetery and that bunch of eaters before we stop."

We continued for only a couple of blocks, and to our surprise, we had left the residential development and were in the middle of an industrial zone.

"This is a hell of a place to put an industrial area, right in the middle of a neighborhood of residential homes!" Gin said shaking her head.

"They probably didn't put it here, it was most likely here first and they built all the houses around it," I told her.

Without even glancing in my direction, Gin pointed to another group of houses, and in her typical fashion, she stated.

"Well whatever the case, stay on this street, there are more houses up ahead."

We traveled along Kimbrough Drive until it dead-ended into a thoroughfare named Johnson Street, where I stopped the Hummer and asked Gin.

"Which way now honey, left or right?"

"It looks like left will take us back the way we came, and I can see more houses down there," Gin answered, pointing to the right.

I turned the Hummer onto Johnson Street toward the houses Gin had pointed out.

"Good choice honey, look a hospital sign, maybe we can pilfer some medicine there, we might need some antibiotics or something later. My guess is, in a small town like this, the odds are pretty good that there will be some medicine left at the hospital. At the very least, there should be some aspirin at the nurse's station," I suggested. "But first things first, we need to find some food, and those house's over there are where we're going to look."

We turned down one of the streets that led into the residential area across from the hospital.

"I see eaters," Billy said calmly. "Only two so far and they are together," he said, pointing in the direction of the two zombies.

"We'll go a few houses down, keep looking for eaters," I said.

"What about that big brick house?" Gin said.

"No brick houses, unless we are going to hold up in them. If we get trapped in a brick house, we wouldn't be able to chop through the walls and escape if we had to. A house with vinyl siding is strong enough to keep the eaters out, but would at least give us a chance to break through the drywall and get away, and we could probably do it with our sickles if we had no other choice. So we're going to stay away from the older houses, they're built a lot stronger than the modern one's are, at least until we find a place that we're going to stay for awhile, then we'll choose brick, or something better."

"There's what were looking for, a one story home, we don't want to be caught upstairs, so we'll stick to ranch style houses. Let's not go down into any basements either, you hear that boys, no basements, it's too easy to get trapped in a basement," I stressed, as we pulled into the driveway of the ranch style house that I had indicated.

"Everyone keep alert, keep quiet, and keep your eyes open for eaters," I warned. "Use your sickles first, and your guns only if you have to. We want to get in, get what we can, and get out, everyone understand?"

After an affirmative nod from my family, we tentatively approached the side door of the house.

"It's open," Gin whispered, clutching her Berretta 92 with both hands.

"Put that back in your holster, sickles first remember?" I said, reminding her of the one sided conversation we had not two minutes earlier.

"Honey," she said. "You go first, and if you can't handle whatever we run into in there with your sickle, I'll blow their brains out with my gun, all right?"

"Hey, you can't expect me to think of everything," I said in agreement, not finding it to be an appropriate time to have a debate.

I went first as agreed, and the rest of the family followed me. As we sneaked through the side door and into the house, I noticed that for the first time in many days, I didn't smell the stench of rotting flesh.

"Smell that?" I asked.

"Smell what?" Gin asked.

"Exactly," I said. "There is no smell," I maintained, inhaling a deep breath.

"That's great dad, but we're here to look for food, not to smell the roses along the way," Jacob interjected snidely with a smile.

"Very funny son," I replied, tilting my head back and forth, and adding a sarcastic smile.

"Cut it out you two, let's find the food, and get out of here," Gin said, shaking her head and gritting her teeth as a sign of disgust. "This place is creeping me out."