ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (29 page)

There were two men inside the truck, the driver, and a passenger. Neither of them had exited the truck or fired a weapon at us. However, I could see that both men were starting to panic.

One of their previous living comrades had grabbed the driver while still on the deck of the truck, and was attempting to climb through the driver's window from there.

We had stopped shooting by now, and the remainder of the bushwhacker's that were still able to fire a weapon were busy fending off the ever growing population of zombies that were trying to
harvest
them
.

With the driver incapacitated fighting to defend himself, the truck did not move. The man that was riding shotgun could see the situation deteriorating rapidly; his companions were dying all around him, and then coming back and killing more of his friends. In his panicked state, while trying to release the driver of the truck from his former buddies grasp, he fired his rifle at the groping zombie. At that moment, the zombie jerked on the drivers arm and pulled his head directly into the path of the bullet. The man's head literally exploded, covering the inside of the truck, along with the passenger, and the undead intruder, with blood, clumps of hair, pieces of skull, and chunks of brain, (you know, the usual mess). This event sent the man into an even greater panicked state, and sent his zombie friend into even more of a frantic feeding frenzy, as it tasted some of the driver's blood that had landed in its mouth.

"There are more eaters coming up behind us!" Mary yelled, as she pointed in the direction of a group of curious zombies stumbling their way toward what they hoped would be their next meal.

Again, the sound of gunplay had alerted a horde of roving dead and hungry cannibals to our activity, and they were making their way to our position.

"We're going to have to take care of all of them, we don't want any of them following us," I yelled back.

The gunfire from the truck had ceased, all that had arrived alive, were now dead and undead, the only sound coming from the direction of the truck was the sound of the zombies snarling, slurping, and growling, as they chewed on their fallen brethren.

I motioned to the others to converge on the truck by pointing to my AK, and then to the truck. There were about seven eaters devouring the bloody remains of our attackers, with one or two more waiting in the wings to be reanimated and join the group of hungry undead.

"Jacob, Mary, come with me, Billy you stay with your mother," I ordered, as I climbed over the guardrail. "Head shots for all, let's get this done quick, the other bushwhacker's must have heard all the shooting. Hell, everyone else did."

With our guns at the ready, the three of us walked up to the zombie feast and delivered to each and every head, moving or not, a single bullet to the brain.

"Mary, go to our truck and grab the bolt cutters, and while you're at it, get one of the uniforms that didn't fit Gin. With that shirt you're wearing, you stuck out like a sore thumb in that green grass, we're lucky they didn't see us," I said, calmly, but firmly.

Jacob and I kept watch while Mary went back to our truck and retrieved the items that I had requested, she soon returned, and we all rejoined Billy and Gin.

"It's about time," Billy said snidely, half joking. "Those eaters down there are almost here, and there's some more on the other side of the road coming this way."

"Let's get our stuff, it's time to go back into silent mode," I said, picking up an ammo box, and pulling out my newly acquired, and as of yet, unused tomahawk.

We engaged the approaching small horde of zombies in a single file formation. I led the way carving a path through the middle of them, and dividing them into two even smaller groups. The rest of our troop cut them down one by one as they tried to make their way around the fallen zombies that I had dispatched.

"This tomahawk is a good tool for eradicating eaters, it penetrates their skull far enough to kill their brain, but doesn't go in far enough to get stuck, works great," I admitted, while planting the small ax in the head of the last zombie in front of me.

"I'll stick to my sickle," Billy said, jerking the long concave blade vertically through the face of a once attractive twenty-something woman that had just snapped at his arm.

In moments, we had hacked down the rest of the zombies in the horde, and with the latest threat neutralized; we hurried to pick up our belongings and leave the area.

"I think it would be wise if we used a little bit of misdirection at this point," I suggested. "If those men we killed back there don't return to their base in a few minutes, their friends are going to come looking for them, and we don't want to leave a trail of dead eaters for them to follow."

"How are we going to misdirect them?" Jacob asked.

I slung my AK over my shoulder, picked up one of the bags containing our food, and began to walk west.

"We want to go south, so we'll walk west for a hundred yards or so," I shouted as I walked.

"What are you yelling for?" Gin asked, befuddled by my behavior.

"Yeah, dad, I thought we were in silent mode!" Jacob contended.

"He's wants to draw in some more eaters," Mary asserted, in her usual monotone way.

"It's working, look, there are four more of them coming this way," Billy said, pointing to the northwest.

"Perfect," I said, turning toward the four approaching zombies and increasing my pace.

"Someone catch up and help me!" I shouted, once more dropping my supplies.

I stopped in an area under an on ramp that could be seen from the location of the two trucks we had just left. Partially covered with gravel, and where the grass and weeds were mostly shaded from the afternoon sun, it was the ideal place to butcher the oncoming zombies and try to mislead the ambushers.

Mary was the first join me, followed by Billy. The three of us waited in the small clearing for the four hungry zombies to arrive.

"Back to silent mode," I said, shaking my tomahawk in the air
Indian style
.

One by one, the zombies broke through the dense brush into the clearing, and one by one, they were destroyed with forced trauma to their brains.

"Step in their blood, and follow me," I ordered Mary and Jacob as I drenched my boots in zombie blood.

Without questioning my directive, they followed my lead and walked through the puddles of blood.

We set out in the same northwesterly direction that the zombies had appeared from, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the grass.

The zombie's blood soon was wiped from our boot soles by the tall grass, but we walked several more yards, crushing and bending down the brush until we came to the beginning of the on ramp under which we had eliminated the four zombies, and which ultimately led to the pavement covered streets of Houston.

Backtracking our way back to Jacob and Gin at the clearing, we resumed our journey south, being careful to leave no sign of our true direction of travel.

Twenty minutes later, the sound of a vehicle broke through the noise of our panting, as we trudged along lugging our supplies by hand.

"Hear that, it sounds like another truck," Gin said, stopping to listen.

We were traveling parallel to the interstate highway that we had been ambushed on earlier. Only a few hundred yards to the east, we could see another flatbed truck also filled with men, speeding down the road in route to the spot of our earlier firefight.

"Get down everyone," I ordered, dropping to one knee.

Everyone knelt down quickly, and we watched the truck go by.

"I don't think they saw us," Mary concluded.

As the truck drove out of sight, Jacob stood up and said. "Yeah, they didn't see us, they would have stopped."

"Maybe," I said, standing up myself. "We don't know much about them, we know that they shot at us, and then sent more men after us when they failed to stop us at their road block. I think they cleared the highway of vehicles, and used those vehicles to build their wall of cars. I also think they cleared the area of eaters and feral dogs. If they have the resources to do that, we certainly don't want to under estimate them," I pointed out.

"We don't know for sure that they did all of that," Billy quibbled.

"That's right we don't, do you want to make camp here, and see if they show up. I'm sure they'll be very pleased to see us, maybe we'll all sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya together," I said sarcastically.

"I get it dad, we can't take any chances," Billy retorted.

"While we're stopped here, Gin, you and Mary get into those camo uniforms, we didn't get them so you could carry them all over hell creation, we got them so you could wear them," I prompted, thinking we all might need a short rest anyway.

We turned our backs and the girls complied without an argument, which actually surprised me. They put on the uniforms and when they were finished, they started acting a little giddy.

They began to compare the air force camouflage pattern they were wearing, with my multi-cam pattern, Jacob's army digital camo, and Billy's old school Viet Nam camouflage. They said they thought theirs was a much better color, it went well with Mary's blue eyes, and they said how well it blended with the surrounding vegetation. I thought it might have been because in the new world we were in, anything that reminded us of how it used to be before the outbreak, like getting new clothes, was a welcome diversion from the gruesome reality we were living. It didn't really matter why they seemed happy, it was enough that the new uniforms gave them a bit of pleasure, and for a moment took their minds off whatever they might be imaging could be ahead of us, or behind us.

We now looked like a rag tag bunch of third world rebel soldiers, fighting against some oppressive banana republic government. But the reality of the situation was. We were one of many small oppressive governments across the nation, and probably across the world, fighting for our lives on a daily basis against a cannibalistic rebel enemy of unknown origin, unknown numbers, and unknown locations, which at times, unwittingly collaborated with other small oppressive governments just like us, in their effort to defeat us.

"You two look very paramilitary," I told Mary and Gin. "I'm proud to have you in my unit."

The girls giggled at my remark, and did their best to do a proper salute.

"Ok, enough messing around, we can't take any chances remember," Billy reminded, picking up his share of the supplies and ammo.

I bent down, reached for the items that I had been allocated to carry, and restated his comment.

"He's right; we need to get moving right now."

Walking in single file, for what seemed like miles, I kept looking back over my shoulder, checking for the bushwhackers that might be following us. After several hours of walking, we found ourselves far from the freeway, and far from any vegetation that vaguely matched any of our uniforms. We were in the heart of what you might call the uptown area. Small business storefronts, parking lots, drive thru banks, and numerous other buildings ripe for the picking. However, with no means of transportation, we were already carrying as much as possible, and the load was wearing us down.

"Nothing but good news people, looks like we've found plenty of places to sleep tonight. Vehicles are starting to become abundant again," I said, pointing at the buildings ahead.

Just then, a very tall zombie appeared from an alleyway.

"I spoke too soon; there is some bad new right in front of us."

I pulled my tomahawk from my tactical vest.

"Be ready, you know there's always more than one," I warned, while approaching the giant stumbling menace.

I timed my swipe at the zombie so that the tomahawk impacted its skull in between its off balance lurches. As the small ax dug a thin hole in the cranium of the zombie, two more appeared from the same alleyway.

These two new zombies were children, girls, one about eight, and the smaller one looked like it was barely old enough to be able to walk, maybe one and a half, or two years old at the most.

Mary had run up beside me ready to slay any zombies that might pose a threat, but seeing the baby zombie, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Jacob stepped forward; leaped over the once towering zombie I had just put down, and stuck his sickle into the side of the eight year olds head.

The horizontal swing was powerful, but not well placed. Jacob's weapon had embedded itself directly behind the little girls jaw, and the point of the blade had exited out the other side of her face directly behind her jaw, and right below her ear on the opposite side, completely missing her brain and leaving her a fully functioning pissed-off zombie.

Jacob was able to hold her at a distance, by maintaining a firm grip on his sickle's handle, and keeping his arm straight.

Mary was still self-immobilized, frozen in some kind of panic, or fear, or disbelief, or something, whatever was holding her back from defending herself against the attack was irrelevant at that moment, although the baby was sickeningly freaky looking, and small, it was still dangerous, and it was about to reach Mary.

Jacob, my son, was struggling with his zombie, and losing ground. Billy and Gin were nowhere in sight, and Mary was about to die at the hand of a two year old. I had to make a decision, I had to choose between saving my son I'd known and loved for sixteen years, or saving Mary, a girl I had met only a few days ago.