ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (33 page)

"Now," I said, lighting one of our gas cocktails.

Billy reached over with a bomb in each hand, and a gentle puffing sound was heard as both wicks caught fire at the same time.

As I climbed from under our truck, I could see the passenger door open as Jacob emerged from the vehicle toting his carbine.

"Give me one of those," he said, holding his hand out.

I didn't have time to argue with him, those bushwhackers were already inside the building, and it wouldn't take them long to see that they had fallen into a trap.

"Here," I said, handing him one of my flammable cocktails.

Billy had already begun to run toward the front door and was several yards in front of us, and Jacob easily passed me as we ran, leaving me to bring up the rear.

The crackle of gunfire was now the dominant sound coming from inside the jail, heard over the shouts of "zombs" being called out by the panicking men as our would be attackers fought off the hungry monsters we had released.

Billy ran past their truck and hurled one of the Molotov cocktails into the doorway of the jail. We heard the glass bottle break and a low swooshing sound as the jailhouse doorway became swallowed up in flames. He tossed his second bomb into those flames, and as we heard the glass bottle break inside the building, the sounds of roaring flames and of men screaming pierced the night.

Billy turned around, only to see the driver of the bushwhacker's truck had opened his door and was taking aim at him with his pistol. The man was aiming his gun at Billy through the gap between the door and the cab, but before the driver could get a shot off, a glass bottle slammed into the metal frame of the cab above him, and16 ounces of ignited gasoline rained down on his head and shoulders.

Shooting Billy now became much less of a priority to the man. As his gasoline soaked flaming head burned, his skin bubbled and the boiling blisters popped, his hair was quickly singed off, and his eyeballs boiled within the confines of their sockets. In addition, every breath the panicked man inhaled, served to ingest the petroleum-fueled flames into his lungs as he fell back into his truck screaming and slapping the living shit out of his face, in a futile attempt to extinguish the flames.

Jacob, still moving toward the man at a steady run after tossing his bomb onto the truck, jumped up and drop kicked the truck's door closed, trapping the burning man inside.

The sound of gunfire began to cease, as it was replaced by the sound of more men's screams as they were burned alive in the confines of the jail.

Sprinting the hundred feet or so, I quickly caught up to my sons. I then walked up as close as I dared to the door of the jail and launched my single bomb as far as I could into the bowels of the flaming building.

Another swooshing sound drowned out the fading screams of the roasting men inside. Fire sprang from every window in the building now, and it shot up into the sky from the roof, soon the building became completely encompassed in flames and the intense heat from the fire forced us to move back to our truck.

"That guy that's on fire in the truck, when he finally burns out, he's going to be one ugly eater," Billy said laughing.

"The upper part of his body, especially his head is going to be burnt to a crisp. I don't think ugly is going to be the right word for what he's going to look like," Jacob added, giggling.

I knew they were laughing partly out of stress, and partly out of relief that they weren't killed, so I interjected.

"That was a stupid plan they had, slamming their truck into the building, not knowing what was waiting for them inside, let's face it, we got lucky again, and they died because they were stupid."

The sound of gunfire, along with the crackling and bright glow from the jailhouse inferno, had attracted some of the zombies that were patrolling the area in search of food. We kept a close eye on them while we watched the fire and tried to calm ourselves, and as we did so, we made a few less than politically correct jokes about the man burning in the truck, which we began to refer to as match head.

Soon we began to see zombies converging on the jail in greater numbers, and with that new and yet ever present threat upon us again; we decided to climb into our postal truck and continued our drive south.

"One last thing," I said. "Everyone in the truck, I'll be right back."

As my family boarded our truck and prepared to depart. I braved the heat of the nearby burning building, and ran back to the flatbed truck and opened the driver's door. What was left of the man inside had stopped burning, the fire had probably sucked up all of the oxygen in the cab, but he was still smoldering and releasing steamy vapors from his chard and blistered skin. He had not reanimated into a zombie as of yet, but I knew that it wouldn't be long before he did. So I ran back and joined my waiting family in the truck, and we continued on our journey, this time however, we traveled with the confidence of knowing that nothing capable of following us was on our trail.

"I saw you open match head's door, why did you do that dad?" Jacob asked, shaking his head in dismay.

"I thought it would be a pity to let such a lovely creation stay locked up inside that truck for the rest of eternity," I answered laughing. "I thought I'd let it out so that others might have the opportunity to enjoy that freak show at a later date."

"That was kind of a dangerous thing to do just for a joke honey," Gin scolded. "Don't do anything like that again, ok?"

"All right, but you've got to admit, at some point that thing is probably going to scare the proverbial holy living excrement out of somebody," I said laughing loudly.

"No doubt about that," Billy agreed, laughing too.

"I just hope it's not us, that get's the crap scared out of us," Jacob added.

"Well I'm sure we're going to get the crap scared out of us at some point down the road, we always do, it just won't be from match head," Gin remarked.

"Okay, enough banter, I've got to concentrate on the road," I stressed, while adding one more felony hit and run to my total, by planting the right front fender of our truck into the left hip of an unsuspecting zombie that had staggered onto the road in front of us. Thereby dislocating his leg and disassembling his lower spine, leaving him sprawled out, and thrashing violently around on the hard concrete surface of the road, awaiting the next felonious driver to come along.

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THE GAS STATION

We hadn't been in the Houston area very long and we had already had several harrowing experiences, and had to get lucky a couple of times to stay alive. We were beginning to understand why Clyde had told us to avoid Dallas. I think better advice might have been to avoid big cities in general.

In the beginning, taking the river south kept us off the highways for most of our trip, which by default kept us from encountering very many non-infected humans. However, now that we were traveling mainly on the interstate highways and skirting big cities, we were bound to run into more and more living people.

That in itself was a double-edged sword, or a flip of a coin, take your pick. Because we never knew which we might encounter, people like Frank and the Assassins willing to help you, or on the other side of the coin, there were people like the Ambushers, willing to kill you without blinking an eye just because you entered their turf.

We had already lucked out a several times during our journey, and as we drove along, all of the sudden it looked as if we may have used up our allotment of good luck.

Pinging sounds against the side of our truck alerted us to the newest peril that was to befall our small troop.

"What's that?" Gin shouted.

I knew all too well what it was, it was the same sound that we had heard just days before when we were ambushed on another section of the freeway, it was a sound that I dreaded hearing.

"Someone's shooting at us again, just like before," I informed her. "But no road block this time, it's random gunfire from somewhere."

"Get down boys," Gin ordered.

"All of you get down," I yelled, slumping down across the steering wheel.

"All we can do is keep driving and hope they don't disable the truck," Gin speculated, crouching down behind the dash.

"There are only a couple of places that it could be coming from, either that row of trees over there, or somewhere in that group of storage buildings," I said, pointing to the two possible places that the shooter might be hiding.

"Billy, stick your AK out your mother's window and spray both those areas," I told him, still dodging abandon vehicles on the road, which most likely helped dodge some of the gunman's bullets.

Billy leaned over the seat and directed his mother to roll down her window. As Gin complied, Billy stuck his rifle out the window and fired it in the direction of the small cluster of buildings.

"You probably won't hit anybody, but you might detour whoever it is from shooting at us for a minute. Shoot into those trees too," I said, pointing again to a small wooded area in the distance.

Billy alternated his fire, several shots at the buildings, then several shots at the woods, then back to the buildings again.

From the snipers nest our actions probably looked like a drive by shooting with no specific target in mind. More of the spray and pray method, or the accuracy through volume doctrine if you will, instead of any well-aimed precise shots.

What seemed like a lifetime passed in just a few seconds, and the sound of bullets hitting our truck ceased.

Remembering the prisoners and their roadblock, I slowed our truck to a crawl anticipating another blockade that I had yet to see.

However, the road was clear as far as we could see, except of course for the usual scattered derelict vehicles and a few stray putrid smelling regenerated flesh eaters that occasionally ambled onto the roadway, putting themselves in the crosshairs of my always-willing homicidal truck bumper.

Therefore, after a couple of hundred yards we began our normal cruising speed again. Only bothering to add three of the current
road zombies
to my hit and run total

"Unfortunately, I think we're going to run into much more of that kind of thing," I said. "If we do, sooner or later one of us is going to catch a bullet."

Gin looked at me, and I could see the confusion on her face.

"How are we going to avoid it?" she asked, with the look of confusion on her face beginning to turn to the look of fear in her eyes.

The stress of death around every corner every minute of every day and night, was starting to take its toll on her, and I didn't have an answer. Our situation was starting to take a toll on all of us.

With pirates, ambushers, crazies, zombies, feral dogs, and now random people sniping at us, we needed to change our tactics and try a different approach.

What kind of different approach? I had no idea.

However, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. And just like before the apocalypse, and to quote the greatest singer-song writer that ever lived.

"
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans
."

That's exactly what happened to us, we were busy trying to make other plans, and life happened to us,
apocalypse life
.

I noticed that the fuel gage had dropped well below where it had been just minutes before.

"Something's wrong with our fuel tanks, I think we've got a leak."

Down the road a few hundred yards farther, on a stretch of road that had a gap between wrecked vehicles, I stopped the truck to check our fuel tanks.

"We've got a leak all right, we've got nothing but leaks in this tank," I said, pointing to several bullet holes at the bottom of the tank.

"That's half of our gas, gone," Billy said, climbing out of the truck.

"What's next? How far can we get on just one tank?" Gin asked.

Looking down at the perforated fuel tank and the last reminisce of its contents dripping onto the road, I answered.

"I don't know, but our good tank was the one that was emptying first so it's got less fuel, and with all the holes in this tank, I'm not sure it's safe to drive this truck anymore."