ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (34 page)

Jacob climbed out of the truck, looked at the leaking fuel tank and declared.

"We need to find another vehicle, I don't want to end up like match head!"

"Start unloading our stuff, it looks like we're on foot again," I said with a sigh. "And make sure we bring those bolt cutters, I think we'll probably need them."

"I got'em right here dad," Jacob announced, holding the bolt cutters in the air.

On foot again, and burdened like pack mules, we lugged our supplies down the road in search of another means of transportation.

The ammunition and water was by far the heaviest burden we had to deal with. Our guns were heavy too, but in comparison to the weight and bulk of the water and ammo, they were much easier to tote, and their slings afforded us several configurations by which we could easily carry them in different ways.

Gin was wearing out the quickest, but we were all feeling the pain our cargo was inflicting upon us. The old military adage, "
Ounces equal pounds and pounds equal pain
" kept coming to mind.

"I don't know how much further I can go like this," Gin said, stopping to readjust her backpack. "At this point, I'll take any car, truck, wagon, bike, I don't care."

"Like always, we'll grab the first vehicle that we can get started, and worry about finding a better one later," I said, agreeing with her, and shifting my rife to my left side.

"We better find one before someone else shoots at us," Billy added.

We walked for the next few hours, stopping and resting each time while we checked abandon means of transportation that were not housing their former owners that were trapped and slowly decomposing inside.

Then, when we were at the point of total exhaustion and felt we couldn't take another step, we happened upon a minivan identical to the one we used to own and had abandon at the boat launch at the beginning of our journey.

Jacob had managed to walk slightly faster than the rest of us, was several yards ahead of the group, and arrived at the minivan first.

"The keys are in this one!" he shouted.

"See if it will start," I replied, without much enthusiasm or hope.

To everyone's surprise, and relief, with one turn of the key the engine started.

"Unlock the rear hatch," Gin said, dropping her backpack on the ground behind the vehicle.

We opened all of the van's doors and hurriedly tossed our supplies in.

"How much gas does it have? Gin asked, concerned that this ride might be a short one.

I glanced down at the gas gage and answered.

"Not much, but enough to find a gas station, that is if we don't wreck it or get it shot out from under us!"

Loaded up, and on four wheels again, the vigil to find a filling station began in earnest.

One thing about the American landscape, there never seems to be a shortage of gas stations, and the Houston area was no exception. Almost immediately, Billy spotted a familiar sign in the distance advertising the price of gas on the day our normal world ended.

"Over there, look, a gas station," he pointed out.

"With the electric out the pumps aren't going to work, how are we going to get the gas?" Gin asked.

"We brought that little squeeze pump with us, remember, it's in my backpack. It might take awhile, but we can pump the gas out of the underground tanks directly into the van," I answered.

Our newly acquired vehicle's tank was almost empty, and the plan was to pump as much gas into the tank as we could, and if the gas station sold gas cans, we'd fill up one or two and take them with us.

“The gas station is right up here, when we get there we'll have to be on the lookout for eaters, feral dogs, and feral people, and anything else that might try to kill us," I warned.

"So be on the lookout for the usual things, right," Jacob wisecracked.

Ignoring his remark, I continued.

"I'll fill up the tank and the rest of you cover me. If everything goes smooth, after the gas tank is full, we'll check for gas cans and fill them too.”

"What about using the blades? Don't we need to be quiet? Gin asked.

"Only if there are one or two eaters, four at the most, any more than that we need to just shoot'em and find another gas station," I told her. “So, if I say shoot, you shoot, get me?” I said sternly.

They all replied. “Yes!”

"And you all should know by now that you don't have to wait for me to tell you to shoot, you go ahead and shoot if you have to, right?"

Again, they all replied "Yes!"

“And if I say shoot all of them, you shoot every damn one of them that you can, whether
you
think they're a threat or not, get me!”

My family looked at me knowingly, and again, each of them replied. "Yes!"

"Remember, head shots on the eaters, and for everyone, or everything else, any hit is a good hit. Get me?"

The family nodded as Billy firmly tapped his rifle's drum magazine twice to insure it was locked in place.

None of the nation's power grid was still intact by now, and there was no hope that the gas station would have electricity to run the pumps, why would it, nowhere else did.

However, the outbreak and subsequent societal break down had happened so fast, that it was almost a sure thing that the underground tank would be able to supply us with as much fuel as we could take with us.

We pulled into the gas station, and I parked beside the small round metal covers where the tanker trucks filled the subsurface tanks. We leaped out of the van, and everyone took their place guarding the van, and my attempted retrieval of fuel.

Prying off the metal cover on the covert fuel well with the pointed end of my tomahawk, I quickly gained access to the much-needed gasoline below. Wasting no time, I inserted the pump hose into the tank and began to squeeze the oval rubber bulb between the two miniature pump hoses, pulling gasoline up from the buried tank. I removed the van's gas cap and replaced it with the hose that was now spewing out gas from the subterranean tank.

Turning toward me, Jacob announced to his mother.

"It's working mom, dad's filling the tank."

Gin glanced at me and then at Jacob, nodded her head, and returned to her sentry duties.

"This is going faster than I thought it would," I said, steadily pumping the bulb. "A few more minutes and we'll be done."

"Eater!" Gin said, pointing to one coming around the corner of the building.

"I'm closer, I'll get it," Billy said, walking toward the lone zombie.

"Whack that zomb," Jacob jeered, before looking back at me and smiling.

"Hey, that's what those men back at the jail called them."

"Let's stick with "Eaters", less confusion that way," I sternly suggested.

"Okay!" Jacob replied.

"Whack that eater Billy!" Jacob called out softly, this time using his own families slang.

"Be careful Billy!" Gin beseeched him, as he approached the solitary zombie.

"Thanks mom, I never would have thought of that," Billy replied sarcastically.

Billy did as Jacob had recommended, and split the zombie's head open with one swift blow, dropping it to the ground in front of him.

"Check the side of the building, but don't leave our sight, and be careful, remember they travel in packs," Gin ordered, reminding her son, and then scanning the area on the other side of the building for danger.

Just then a sputtering sound came from inside the station, and the gas pumps lit up. Someone inside had started a generator. Then a shadow moved passed the front door, the door opened and a crouching woman stuck her head out and yelled.

"That's our gas! You gonna pay for that gas?"

Upon hearing the sound of the generator starting, Jacob and Gin moved to the other side of the van and were watching the woman from behind it. Billy was checking the side of the building for more zombies, and had the woman flanked. While I stood alone in the middle of the gas station's parking lot, the perfect easy target for someone with minimal shooting skills.

"How much do you want for it?" I questioned.

"Don't want no money, money ain't no good no more, we're on the barter system now," the woman answered with a thick southern drawl. "What else you got that we might want?"

"We don't have much, a few bottles of water and a couple cans of tuna, that's about it," I answered, hoping she would let it go at that and let us leave without pushing the issue.

"First you steal our gasoline, and then you lie to us about what you got," the woman said angrily.

"I'm not lying, we've got next to nothing," I answered, trying to sound pathetic.

"Next to nothing, all you standing around with those fancy looking guns, you call that nothing, and yes, I can see those two behind that van," she hollered angrily.

In the middle of our conversation, my mind drifted away from the immediate peril I was in, and I thought.

"
Now am I to believe that I'm the only person in America that had the foresight to possess some half-way descent firearms, the only one in these United States to be vaguely prepared for an emergency of some kind? What is with this obsession everyone seems to have with my guns
?"

Snapping back to the grim reality that confronted me, I replied to the woman.

"We can't give you our guns, traveling around out here without any firearms would be suicide," I pleaded, putting on the best whining routine I could muster, as I tried to think of a way to turn the tables on this woman.

"That sounds like a personal problem to me," she said, garnering a smile.

"You keep saying things like,
our
gas, you lied to
us
, and what
we
might want. How many of you are in there?" I asked, trying to gain some operational information.

Before the woman could answer my question, I watched her face explode through the glass door she was kneeling behind, and then her body slumped through the hole in the door that her face had made on its way outside just moments before.

Before I could make a move, I saw Billy pushing the front door of the building open, dragging the woman's faceless body with it.

"It's okay everybody, she's alone in here."

During my conversation with the woman, Billy had sneaked around to the back door of the building (in blatant disregard for our rule number 4, I might add), which the woman had left unlocked, entered the building and shot the woman in the back of the head while I unknowingly distracted her.

"Are you sure nobody else is in there?" I asked, thinking that maybe the woman had tried to mislead us into thinking that she wasn't alone.

"There's only two rooms and a small hallway, I'm sure," Billy replied, as he walked toward me. "Nothing in there wasting our time over either," he added, as he pulled the siphon hose from van, and screwed on the gas cap.

"Then let's get back on the road before something else happens," I said, as I drained the remaining fuel from our small pump onto the ground and stuffed it back into my backpack.

"Too late honey, something else has happened!" Gin alerted, as her and Jacob came around from behind the van.

"Look!" she said.

I looked over at her, and she was pointing to a large group of zombies moving in our direction.

"There must be fifty of them!" Jacob yelled, as he raised his carbine and took an aggressive stance.

The
now
faceless woman in the gas station had unknowingly distracted us from the approaching danger of the large marching horde of rotting resurrected dead that was now upon us.

"Way too many of them to fight out here in the open, and no time to climb in the van," I screamed, as three zombies were already between our vehicle and us, with a multitude of their friends close behind. "Get inside the station, hurry!"

It was a short run to the entrance of the building, Gin and Billy got there first, then Jacob, I brought up the rear, and made it to the door at the same time as the zombie that was leading the pack did.

I swung my elbow back and caught the revived dead man square in the temple, knocking him back just long enough for me to get inside the station. The body of the woman who Billy had killed, who's blood oozing faceless corpse was guiding the less astute zombies to our sanctum sanctorum, was propping the door open, leaving a one-foot gap which was more than enough room for any zombie (except for maybe that 400 pounder I dropped last week) to push its way through. Unfortunately for us, within seconds, that is exactly what they were trying doing.

Thankfully, because of laws that were first enacted in Chicago after a tragic theater fire in 1903, and nationally some five years later after the Collinwood school fire, where 175 people lost their lives, 172 of which were children. All exit doors on public buildings must open outward, allowing people to exit the buildings without having to pull the door open against a rush of panicked victims.

Fortunately for us, even with the weight of the dead woman's carcass dragging on the floor, the mass of dead former humanity leaning inward on the door, effectively closed the door for us and stopped the onslaught of famished zombies dead in their tracks (no pun intended).