ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (39 page)

"Wake up you two," the Sarge bellowed. "I didn't mean you had to sleep here!"

Crawling from under the bus, and wiping the sleep from his eyes, Jeff said. "We know, but we wanted to make sure that we did the job to your satisfaction."

I wasted no time boarding the modified school bus and climbing onto one of the shooting platforms. I pushed the port cover open and stuck my head out, and standing up I was able to move freely in all directions, and after pretending to fire my rifle from the perch, I signaled to the sergeant my approval by giving him the thumbs up, and acknowledging my approval to Jeff and Fred by saying.

"I see you even padded the edges of the hatch, you two did a great job."

"Thank you sir," Jeff replied, not remembering my mandate from the night before.

"If it's all the same to you, we're going to go get some real sleep now, this concrete floor is not the most comfortable place to sleep," Fred added, as Jeff nodded his head in agreement.

"It's time we get going Jack, go wake up your family, eat some breakfast, get your gear, and meet me back here in exactly one hour, I'll get the rest of the crew," Sarge ordered, as he left the garage.

I made my way back to our sleeping quarters, not really pleased with the thought of traveling a hundred miles one way, through "
Eaterland
". But the Sarge and the rest of the group had been good to us, and the school bus modifications looked sound, and the prospect of gathering some military weapons and perhaps a tank, was enough to convince me that the reward might be worth the risk.

"Wake up everyone, it's time to get ready, wait until you see the vehicle we'll be traveling in today," I said, trying to sound cheerful.

"Are we going to the armory today like you and the sergeant talked about last night, honey?" Gin asked, sitting up and stretching her arms.

"Like I told you last night, the Sarge kind of volunteered us, so indeed we are, it's only one hundred miles away, and if all goes well, we'll be bringing back a lot of serious firepower," I answered, trying to sound like the whole trip was no big deal.

"Dad, can you tell me when everything has gone well since this whole thing started?" Jacob asked, again sarcastically.

"We're still alive, that's gone pretty well hasn't it?" I retorted back sarcastically.

"Point well taken," Jacob replied.

"Enough messing around, we leave in less than an hour, let's get our gear together and then go get some breakfast," I suggested, calmly. "We can bring more ammo than usual; we'll be riding this time, instead of walking."

With our gear organized. We went to the cafeteria and consumed a fine breakfast that consisted of steak and eggs, and when we had had our fill, we retreated to our quarters to collect our gear.

"Everyone better make a facilities check before we leave, we're going to be on the road for a while, and as you know, there's not many restrooms out there, and even if there were, I doubt if the Sarge is going to want to stop every five minutes to let you take a squirt," I warned.

"I'll be right back," Billy said, as he turned and ran back toward the cafeteria.

"Hurry up, we've only got a few minutes before we leave," I yelled down the hallway to him.

When I came out of the restroom, I saw Billy coming down the hallway pushing a food cart.

"Since we'll be riding today, we can use this to haul more ammunition to our vehicle, that is, if there's enough room in the vehicle to carry all the ammo this cart can haul!" Billy said, expecting me to say there was a limited amount of space, as he was unaware of the size of the vehicle we'd be traveling in.

"Good idea son," I said smiling. "There's plenty of room for as much ammo as we can bring along."

Another quick stop at the ammunition room to load the food cart to its capacity, and we set off to meet up with the Sarge and the rest of the bus crew.

"Okay, is everyone ready for this?" I said, just before opening the door to the garage.

"We're ready," Jacob said, while the others nodded their heads in agreement.

Trying to set a tone of excitement to take away from the real danger of the upcoming mission, I swung the door open and shouted. "Ta-da!"

"Are you kidding me?" Jacob exclaimed. "That's cool dad."

"Yeah, that's really cool dad," Billy added, grinning from ear to ear.

"All right you're here, right on time, let's get this monster machine loaded and hit the road shall we?" the Sarge said, acting as if we were about to embark on an excursion to the local park for a picnic.

"Can we stop somewhere and pickup a couple of twelve packs of beer for the journey Sarge," I quipped, trying to add a little humor to the moment.

"I don't think a couple of twelve packs will be enough, we better get a couple of cases," Sarge answered laughing.

Everyone's mood was upbeat as we pulled out of the garage and made our way along the driveway, through the parking lot and onto the main road.

"No shooting at anything unless we need to, we don't want to bring unnecessary attention to ourselves," Sarge ordered, as our driver Dave plowed into the first of many zombies we would run into on our journey, literally.

"This snowplow blade works great, did you see that monster get shoved to the side, I mean the part of it that didn't get sheared off at the ankles," Dave said giggling, with a maniacal look on his face.

"Jack and his family call them
Eaters
," Sarge said giggling too, only without the maniacal look on his face.

"That works for me, "Eaters" it is," Dave replied, still giggling as he plowed into another zombie (get it,
plowed
into).

By the sergeant's order, Jeff and Fred had left nine seats intact in the bus including the driver's seat. Everyone going on this mission was chosen for it because of a unique talent they possessed, and the room was going to be needed to haul back the weapons we hoped to acquire at the armory.

Four of the seats were filled by my family and me, we were chosen because of my past with the Sarge, and because of our prowess with firearms, accept for Gin, I had asked for her so that there would be no chance that my family would become separated, and she wasn't exactly a bad shot.

The other five seats accommodated the driver Dave, who drove a school bus for a living before the apocalypse and told everyone. "If you ever have to drive a school bus for a living, kill yourself first!" The Sarge, well someone needed to lead the mission. A stocky guy named Bruce, who in his former life was a locksmith. A man named Rich who didn't say much, but always carried a 12 gage tactical shotgun, and who had been an armored vehicle mechanic in the army and claimed he knew how to drive a tank. Plus, a cute small framed blonde girl in her late twenties named Beth, who was sporting a .22 caliber version of an AR-15, who everyone seemed to think was some kind of psycho. I guess you never know when one of your psycho friends will come in handy.

After we had ridden for a while, I thought it might be a good idea to get to know the people on the bus besides my family that I was going to have to trust with my life, and vice versa. I had seen all of them at the Y on occasion, but never really got to know them. So I smiled, trying not to offend her, and asked Beth.

"Does that .22 do the job on eaters?" She smiled at me and answered.

"Usually I take one shot, and I get one kill, but sometimes I add an extra couple of shots just for fun. The .22 is quieter than most guns, so I feel I can take more shots without making too much noise."

"With that kind of attitude, you'll get along well with my son Jacob," I divulged, still smiling at her.

"Jacob and I get along just fine, we met a few weeks ago at the swimming pool, it'll be nice to do some eater killing with him, I'm a supplier too. We've just never had the pleasure of going on a run together until now," she said confidently."

"Jack everyone here is an experienced supplier, they've all killed more eaters than I can count, so don't worry, you're in good hands," Sarge added, as he scanned the horizon with a pair of 20x50 binoculars.

"I'm just trying to get to know everyone, that's all Sarge," I maintained.

As I was beginning to start up a conversation with Bruce, Dave yelled.

"Here we go people!"

Immediately we heard dull thuds coming from the front of the bus. Zombies were careening off the snowplow blade, and causing it to make a low vibrating twang. First, one or two, then three or four more, then so many that it was impossible to discern any gaps between the thuds, and the twangs.

"We're plowing through a pretty big horde of um," Dave yelled, his knuckles turning white as his grip tightened on the steering wheel.

Blood now splattered over the windshield as severed body parts, crushed skulls, and broken bones, bounced off and over the plow blade, leaving a trail of the crimson liquid in their wake. So much in fact, that the red ooze drifted along the sides of our bus, making our already tinted windows opaque, and soon totally obscuring our view of what was happening outside the bus.

"Lucky for us, Jeff and Fred topped off the windshield washer fluid, at least I can see what were about to hit with this beast," Dave stated, not sounding very confident.

The wipers slapped back and forth, for what seemed like an eternity, smearing the bodily fluids and other assorted hunks of mutilated zombies across the windshield as more and more of the undead slammed against the plow blade. As body parts were tossed all around us, the only pieces that were conspicuously missing were the feet of the undead, which were being chopped off at the ankles and bouncing against the floorboards of our bus, adding an uneven drum roll to the melody of carnage already being played.

"Even with the washer fluid, I can barely see out, it's too bad those guys didn't think to put new wiper blades on this machine," Dave hollered out, turning the wheel to avoid an abandon truck. "I missed that one, but we're going to hit these two at full bore."

A sickening crunch echoed through the interior of the bus, as the two vehicles Dave had referred to were pummeled by the large plow blade, followed by the powerful inertia of the forty-foot school bus.

"We're still rolling, and the plow blade is still attached, I guess that chrome steel reinforcement held," Sarge boasted, with a smirk on his face.

"I guess so," I said, agreeing with him.

The others had remained relatively quiet until now, no screaming or yelling, nothing to distract Dave while he drove through the onslaught of obstacles.

That wasn't a big surprise, we were all seasoned veterans, we'd all seen our share of mayhem and gore, and we'd all been in many tight situations where we thought we were going to die at any moment. So ramming our way through a large group of reanimated dead homicidal maniacs in a five-ton vehicle with a converted snowplow blade attached to the front of it, was just another day at the office for us.

All of the sudden, Beth leaned over and pointed her .22 rifle at one of the side holes.

"Look, fingers, they're grabbing a hold of the bus," she said, firing three rounds into the fingers sticking out of the hole.

The zombies hand retreated quickly, but left two of its fingers twitching on the floor of the bus with several flies hovering around them.

"Check the other holes," Jacob shouted, itching for some action.

He found fingers reaching through two of the other small gun ports, and hacked at them with his machete, leaving even more fingers twitching on the floor.

"Look," Billy yelled. "As soon as we whack the fingers off, they're replaced by another eater trying to stick their hand inside."

"So don't worry about them, they can't get to us through those holes, we'll take care of them after we're clear of this mob scene we're dealing with now," I said. "And besides, their fingers squeeze in those holes are keeping some of the flies out of the bus."

By now, we had mangled countless zombies and spewed gallons of blood from their bodies, which now covered the road, making our bus begin to lose traction.

"There's too many of them out in front of us, the tires aren't gripping the road, I can feel the bus fishtailing and we're slowing down," Dave yelled. "If we stop we're through!"

As fast as I could, I climbed onto the forward platform with my AK, and opened the front top port hatch.

"Somebody take the back port, and shoot the eaters on the right," I shouted, pointing toward the front of the bus.

In a flash, Jacob jumped onto the rear platform, opened the hatch, and began firing his carbine into the crowd of zombies on the right side of our bus. I could hear the whizzing sound of Jacob's bullets fly past my head as I too began to drop the attacking zombies along the right side of the road in front of the bus.

I emptied my drum magazine and ejected it from my rifle, and narrowly avoided being hit by a zombie's severed left arm that flew by me as I ducked back into the bus. Beth had already handed Jacob a loaded magazine, and now stood at the base of my platform with two of my drums in her hands. I sat my empty magazine on the platform and snatched a loaded one from her right hand. Back through the top hatch I went, and began to engage the rabble of zombies again.