ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (25 page)

Our hefty truck plowed into two of the cars the inmates were using to ferry themselves to and from the prison, knocking them forward and out of our way. The impact brought us to a stop forty feet passed where the cars had been parked.

Caught off guard by my display of inept driving prowess, the bushwhackers scrambled over and around the blockade attempting to salvage what was left of their carjacking efforts.

Before the Hummer had come to a complete stop, Billy and Jacob had already grabbed their guns and had them pointing out the broken back window, waiting for their first targets to appear.

They didn't have long to wait, within seconds the hijackers appeared, climbing over parked cars and trucks, running at us, screaming, hollering and firing their guns wildly, like a world war two Japanese
banzai
charge.

I guess they were trying to scare and panic us. They probably assumed that we would be panicked and running scared.

However, after all we'd been through up to now, all of the grisly scenes we'd had to endure, and all of the killing we'd done, all they accomplished with their banzai charge, was to announce their presents and give us closer and easier targets.

If you've ever tried to shoot a gun, and actually hit what you're aiming at while running, you know that even with some practice it is nearly an impossible task at any distance. Not to sound over confident, but the outcome for the ambushing prisoners was predictable from our standpoint.

In prison they might have been bad asses, but out here in the middle of an apocalypse of biblical proportion, we six people in the Hummer were the real bad asses.

They came at us hard, thinking that with their numbers we would cowl down and surrender without a fight. Some of them were even laughing as they ran toward us, some of their bullets even hitting our truck.

Billy was the first to open fire on them, with his AK-47 leveled on the door of the Hummer where the window used to be, he had a stable platform on which to make his shots more accurate. He shot three of them, killing the third one before the first two hit the ground.

Jacob and I then joined in, Jacob firing his SUB-2000 over the top of Billy's head as he crouched down taking advantage of the makeshift rifle rest.

"Keep your head down Billy," he yelled over the sound of the gunfire.

I knew it would be difficult to get my AK wrestled passed the steering wheel in a timely manner, so I settled for my pistol.

Steel challenge shooting on the weekends had prepared me for this exact scenario. In steel shooting, most of the targets are twelve-inch diameter, round steel plates (about the size of a human head), anywhere from seven to twenty yards away; the goal was to hit each of the plates with one shot as fast as you could. Five targets, five shots.

As fate would have it, several of the attacking road pirates just happened to be seven to twenty yards away, so just like shooting steel plates, my bullets ripped through the heads of five of our advisories killing them instantly, while preventing them from coming back from the dead.

The melee was over almost as fast as it had begun. Gin and Megan were down on the floor, with Megan still reeling from the pain her eye injury was causing her.

Mary had raised her weapon, but was afraid to pull the trigger; fearing that she would hit Billy or Jacob.

With the immediate threat extinguished, we watched two of the prisoners that were still alive, abandon their makeshift fortress and run from the scene back in the direction of the prison.

"Forget about the ones that were killed without a headshot. Our truck is damaged and Megan is hurt, we don't have time to deal with them, we need to leave before they turn into eaters and attack us again, or the noise brings more eaters this way," I said, as I started the engine, hoping the Hummer was still drivable.

"Some of them are just wounded, still alive," Mary mentioned unemotionally.

"Hell with the wounded ones, their buddies will take care of them when they come back from the dead," I said, also without emotion.

With the two front tires flat, and the radiator leaking fluid, our crippled Hummer limped down the road away from our latest battlefield.

"We're not going to get very far, we need another ride, and we need it fast," I said, struggling to steer our vehicle.

"I've stopped the bleeding, but she needs some pain medicine and some real bandages, we need to find a drug store or a hospital, and soon," Gin said, as she cuddled Megan in her arms.

I knew from experience's that I had had as a teen, that we wouldn't get far in the wrecked Hummer, once you have a radiator leak, especially one as large as the one in our vehicle, you're only going to go about four miles before the engine overheats and locks up, and that's if you're lucky.

I didn't know exactly how far the next exit was, however, it wasn't long before a road sign informed us that it was only two miles ahead.

By now, the Hummer had shed the rubber from its front wheels and we were riding down the road on just the rims, spewing sparks and making a horrendous noise.

"Only about a half mile to the exit, with all the noise we're making we're going to have to abandon this ride quick, and get some distance between us and it," I shouted over the screeching of metal scrapping the concrete.

A short time later, the freeway exit came into sight.

"Here's our exit," I informed the group. "Start looking for a parking lot, or someplace that we might be able to get another ride," I directed, as we left the interstate.

"Look, there's some kind of truck place over there," Jacob said, pointing to a large lot filled with trailers.

"Dad, look, there's a truck stop on the other side," Billy shouted.

"Truck stop means fuel, and like Clyde said, supplies," I added.

"They'll probably have first aid kits there," Gin added, still holding Megan close.

"When we get to the bottom of this ramp we bail out. Weapons and ammo are our main concern, we'll come back later if we can for anything that we left behind," I ordered.

We stopped at the bottom of the exit ramp; the Hummer was smoking from the friction of bare metal scrapping the road, and the steam from the almost dry radiator.

"We got here just in time," Jacob said, jumping out of the truck. "This thing is about to catch on fire."

"Grab our stuff and let's get Megan over to that truck stop," Gin urged, helping Megan out of the Hummer.

We had no sooner gathered our belongings and started in the direction of the truck stop, that three zombies appeared in our path.

"Most likely attracted by the noise, I'll take care of them," Mary said, pulling a machete from her backpack.

Billy, with his sickle in hand, added. "I'll help."

As the zombies came nearer, Billy and Mary, approached them head on, and as the lead zombie made an awkward lunge at Billy, Mary swung her machete upward diagonally as hard as she could, like a tennis player might hit the ball with a backhand stroke.

The razor sharp machete sliced through the nose of the zombie and continued into its skull, stopping half way through and sticking in the rotting corpses head, wedged between the sliced bones.

Nodding his approval of Mary's quick reaction, Billy stepped to his left and planted his sickle deep into the brain of the next stinking animated carcass in line, but unlike Mary's kill, when the zombie dropped to its knees, Billy's sickle effortlessly slid out from the crown of its blood gushing head, as Billy had now mastered his technique.

Mary struggled for a moment trying to free her weapon from the skull of her first kill, but with her third and final upward yank, the top the insane monsters cranium snapped off, making a dull popping sound like a muffled firecracker.

Her large brush clearing knife now free, Mary set her sights on the third attacker. She quickly and without hesitation, walked up to the zombie and rammed her machete straight through its right eye socket and into the brain of the last attacker.

She then turned to me and said. "That takes care of that, now let's get to the truck stop!"

The truck stop was close to the freeway; it wasn't more than one hundred yards from our location, so within minutes we had arrived at the gas stop and cleared the building of a few zombies that had taken up residence there. It took some time to extract the now dead,
undead
bodies we had created, but before long, we were searching for supplies as Billy stood watch at the front door.

"Here's some first-aid kits," Mary said, bringing two of the larger ones to the front of the store.

"Here's some pain killers," Jacob called out, raking several different brands off the shelf and into his arms.

"Find her some water, or something to wash down the pills," Gin shouted.

Billy reached down and pulled a can of soda from a display beside the door.

"Here catch," he said, as he tossed the can under handed to his mother.

Gin gave Megan a couple more pills than the recommended dose stated on the medicine's label, then asked Mary and Jacob to find some sleeping pills.

Most of the aids for sleeping at the truck stop were not to help you sleep, they were to aid you from falling asleep. However, together Mary and Jacob managed to find what Gin had asked for, and delivered it to her.

"Lay on this counter Megan, I need you to be asleep, I can't get the glass out of your eye while you're moving all around," Gin said to her softly, as she helped her onto the counter.

Again, Gin gave Megan more than the recommended dose, and as the pain medicine was beginning to take effect, so too were the sleeping pills, and as Megan drifted off to sleep, Gin looked through the first-aid kits in search of some kind of ointment for Megan's eye, and ordered Jacob to find a tool kit of some kind.

"Here mom, mostly all they have are big tools, except for these needle nose pliers, but you might be able to use this," Jacob said, handing his mother an eye glass repair kit. "It has some really small tweezers in it."

"These are perfect," Gin declared, pulling out the tweezers.

When the sleeping pills took effect and Megan was sound asleep, Gin carefully operated on her, and was able to find and extract all of the glass that was embedded in her eye.

"That should do it, all the glass is out, and I smeared some anti-bacterial ointment on the eye, it should heal up in a couple of weeks, but she's going to be blind in that eye. We're going to have to get her an eye patch too, she's going to have to wear one from now on.

We were far enough away from the prison, and there was no way that the prisoners could know that we were just a few of miles down the road from them, and with Megan in the shape she was in, we decided to stay the night at the truck stop, and look for a new vehicle the next morning.

We made ourselves as comfortable as possible, and settled in for the night. With no electricity, there were no lights, which made it easier to fall asleep.

I had taken the first watch as I always did, and near the end of my watch, I was getting ready to wake up Mary, who had volunteered to take the second watch. I heard someone moving around and assumed it was Mary preparing to relieve me.

"Just in time Mary," I whispered, not wanting to disturb the others.

Mary didn't answer.

"Mary," I whispered again.

Still there was no answer. Seeing some movement several feet behind me, I pulled my pistol, transferred it to my left hand, then pulled my sickle from my belt and grasped it firmly in my right hand.

The faint glow from the moon cast long and almost indiscernible shadows across the dark room, but as one particular shadow moved toward me, I realized that a zombie must have somehow entered the room.

As the shadow moved closer to me, a gurgling sound was emanating from the darkness, and that sound quickly turned into a growl, there was no doubt now, a zombie was present.

I backed up and put my back against the front door. The dim moonlight was just bright enough for me to see a figure within striking distance. I lifted my sickle and brought it down as hard as I could. However, in the pale moonlight my aim was not as accurate as it might have been in full daylight. My sickle sliced down along the side of the zombie's head. Separating the scalp from the bone all along the side of its skull, and peeling off its left ear as it went. My sickle finally stopped at the bottom of the monster's jaw, and left its ear and scalp from the whole left side of its head laying across its shoulder.

After missing the killing blow to the head with my sickle, and with the flesh-eating maniac nearly upon me, I kept my left arm tucked in by my waist, and I tilted my pistol up at a forty-five degree angle and fired two shots at the trespassing zombie's head.

My first shot hit the left collarbone, shattering it and causing the maniac's left shoulder to slump down in front; my second shot hit its mark by way of the nose. My bullet sailed straight up and through the left nostril, and popped a piece of skull out of the top of the zombie's skull, taking a portion of its deranged brain along with it.

The zombie dropped to the floor at my feet, it was no longer a threat. Its bloody but eerily familiar face was illuminated for a split second by a flash of light coming from outside. I turned expecting to see some idiot with a flashlight walking around the parking lot in the middle of the night, attracting zombies, and feral dogs with its beam, but there was nothing.