ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (8 page)

Entering the house I saw that the tarp that we had put up to cover the back entrance of the house had been pulled down, and was lying several feet from the kitchen, in the middle of the living room floor.

It looked as if it had been dragged from the kitchen in the direction of the front window, leaving a trail of Jon and Julie’s blood on the floor.

I quickly made my way into the living room and saw Jacob by the front window he'd been shooting out of, he was struggling with a zombie, as several other zombies tried to climb through that same window without much success.

Jacob had done what I had told him and left some large shards of glass along the window frame, and the zombies were slicing the flesh from their hands and arms all the way down to the bone, leaving big pieces of slightly greenish tinted skin drooping over the windowsill.

On the floor in front of me, was Jacob's spare magazine that he had unknowingly dropped. He had emptied his first magazine, and when he reached for the spare one that he had brought with him, it wasn’t there, and that undead killer had attacked him before he could pick it up off the floor.

I rushed across the room and struck the zombie in the side of the head with the metal reinforced wooden butt stock of my rifle. It tumbled off to the side of the couch and landed face first on the floor next to the wall.

Although the stock on the rifle had a metal butt plate on it, the zombie was only temporarily stunned, and almost immediately began to stand up. Sticking the barrel of my rifle to the back of the assaulting zombie's head, I pulled the trigger and blew a gaping hole in the back of its skull, and at the same time the exit wound my bullet made was even bigger, which caused most of the zombie's face to be splattered all over the living room wall.

"Are you all right?" I asked, quickly scanning Jacob up and down looking for any wounds he might have suffered.

"I'm fine dad," he said, not really looking the part.

Just then, I heard a noise behind me and saw Jacob lift his rifle and scream.

"Look out!"

He pulled the trigger, and we both cringed as his carbine spit out a deafening
click
.

During his struggle with the zombie, he'd forgotten that he'd run his gun empty.

I swung around and saw a rather large blood stained male zombie staggering toward me, and closing the gap between him and me rather quickly.

Having no time to acquire a proper sight picture, or even enough time to raise the muzzle of my rifle slightly, I fired from the hip, as Jacob had done in the garage during our failed attempt to fill the gas can.

Putting the first bullet just below the mutant's belt buckle, this slowed the zombie's momentum a little, as the 7.62mm full metal jacketed round drilled through its innards and crashed into the back of its pelvic bone.

I pulled the trigger several more times in rapid secession, and watched my bullets slam into the zombie's body.

As the muzzle climbed a small amount with each shot, my bullets impacted the living corpse from its crotch to its eyeballs before it collapsed onto the floor just inches from me.

The power of the AK-47 shot at point blank range, not only slowed the oncoming undead cannibal somewhat, but it also ravaged its body to the point that pieces of its spine and intestines were hanging out the back of its torn and blood soaked shirt.

I looked down at the gory mess that was in a pile at my feet, and I thought to myself, "
I stitched up this subhuman,
Chinese Gangland
style
!"

I stepping over the crumpled body in front of me, and told Jacob to pick up the spare magazine that he had dropped and said. "Let's get out of here."

Ejecting the empty magazine from his rifle, he quickly inserted the fresh one into his gun, and racked a round into the chamber.

"I'm right behind you," he said, as he crammed the empty magazine into his pocket.

We dashed out of the living room, thinking that we would go through the kitchen, into the garage.

That plan was suddenly thwarted when we ran head long into three more of the undead maniacs that were investigating the gunfire they had heard in the living room and had come in through the patio door in the back, and were now blocking our path through the kitchen.

We instantaneously and simultaneously changed direction, reminiscent of a flock of birds changing direction in flight, and scrambled for the only remaining exit left, the front door of the house, which was rapidly being overrun by zombies, from outside and from behind us.

Moving as fast as we could, we ran down the hallway making for the front door. Fortunately, no zombies had infiltrated that far into the house yet, so we were able to reach the front door without having to dispatch anymore-poor souls on our way.

A split second later, we were at the front door with the three zombies following close behind.

I grabbed the door handle and jerked the door open; I threw my shoulder against the storm door, bending it somewhat as I opened it past its maximum and slammed it hard into the side of the porch.

“Come on Jake,” I yelled as I raised my rifle and fired a shot into the head of a female zombie that was standing in the middle of the walkway blocking my path.

As the snarling cannibal dropped in front of me, what was left of its head hit the concrete and made a nauseating thud.

I heard the storm door slam behind Jacob as he lunged quickly through the doorway and onto the porch.

Without breaking stride, Jacob hoisted his carbine to his shoulder and popped off two rounds into the head of an undead that I hadn't seen, as it stumbled toward me from the side of the house.

By now, Gin had moved over to the passenger seat of the van, and Billy had jumped into the back of the van and opened the side door that faced the house.

We ran for the van through a plethora of those homicidal maniacs, firing as we went, dropping most, but missing some, nonetheless, we were creating a vista of horrible carnage in our wake, that under any normal circumstances would have sickened us to the point of vomiting.

We were only a few feet from the safety of the vehicle, when shots rang out from our neighbor's front yard.

Jacob's friend Norton and his father Joe, had been forced out of their house by a group of zombies, and were engaging them on their front lawn.

"It's Norton and his dad," Jacob yelled, as he abruptly stopped.

"Get in," I shouted. "There's not enough room in the boat for any more people."

"Hurry up, get in," Billy screamed, as he saw zombies approaching from the other side of the van.

Jacob screamed back.

"Can’t we help them?"

"No we can't," I answered. "There's nothing we can do for them, they’re on their own son, just like us. Now get in the van!"

Jacob looked very sad as he climbed into our vehicle and closed the door behind him, still watching his friend Norton fending off a growing number of the undead by his father's side.

Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for Joe and Norton, they had unwittingly aided us in our escape, as the sound of their gun shots drew some of the zombies that had been focused on us to their front yard.

Jumping into the driver's seat, I crammed the van into drive and stomped down on the accelerator pedal, the vehicle lurched forward causing my door to slam, and as we launched ourselves out of the driveway and into the street, I saw Jacob in the rearview mirror staring out the back window at his friend Norton still battling zombies at his father's side.

"We could have helped them," he said, almost in tears.

"We just barely made it out of there ourselves. We were lucky none of us were bit, or scratched, or something. If we would have gone to help them, there was a very good chance that we all would have been killed." I said, trying to justify our leaving them to fend for themselves.

"It's too late now," I said sadly. "We've got to concentrate on getting the boat in the water, we're not far from the river, but we don't know what we'll run into on the way, or what will be there to greet us when we get there."

"Besides, Joe is an ex-marine just like your dad, and they were still alive when we last saw them, we got away, and maybe they'll get away too." Gin added, trying to comfort Jacob.

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TO THE RIVER

It wasn't long before we would find out what awaited us along the way. We had only traveled a couple of blocks, during which we found ourselves dodging a few wrecked and abandoned vehicles, when we encountered a large dead dog lying in the middle of the road; it was being feasted upon by two female zombies. Between the three of them they had unintentionally blocked our way, along with the help of a cable TV truck that had wrecked and dropped ladders all over the road.

With little or no shoulder on the road, we had only two choices. We could speed up and try to ram our way through, and hope that any damage to our vehicle or trailer would be minimal, which wasn’t likely.

Or I could stop the van, one or two of us could get out and lure the zombies to the side of the road and dispatch them there, then move a couple of the ladders and we could continue on to the river.

It was imperative that we get the boat to the river. The boat was our plan, and without it, we had no plan.

Zombies seemed to be everywhere we looked, and we certainly didn’t want to be stuck out in the open without a means of transportation. Therefore, I felt we couldn’t risk damage to the van or to the boat trailer.

If we were to get out of our vehicle for a short time, we could eliminate the threat quickly, get back into the van, and be on our way before the sound of our gunfire brought more of these monsters down on us. That is if nobody mistook us for the undead, or just wanted what we had and started shooting at us. That was a chance we would have to take, after all we couldn’t return to our house, and we couldn’t stay there.

I slowly applied the brakes and brought our vehicle to a crawl as we approached the roadblock ahead.

“I’m going to stop the van about ten yards from them. Billy, Jake, you two get out on opposite sides and get their attention, lead them into the ditch and blast them.

Then toss those two ladders off the road and get back in here as fast as you can.”

As we came to a stop, the side doors of the van opened, and Jacob and Billy slid out of their seats onto the asphalt, raised their weapons and began to yell.

“Hey! Hey, you eaters! Look, here we are!”

Both of the female zombies tilted their heads up quickly as if they had been startled, their teeth clinching the same leg bone of the deceased mutt, one at the foot and the other at the hip.

They paused for a moment glaring at the boys, snarling and dripping a dark red color of blood from their mouths that was marbled with foaming white and pink saliva.

Suddenly, without warning and in unison, as if they had choreographed their moves, they rose to their feet, lifting the body of the dog with them until the weight of the canine’s cadaver caused it to tear away from the semi-devoured leg and drop to the ground in front of them.

They moved toward Billy and Jacob, each choosing a different boy to attack. The two zombies now conjoined by the dog’s leg that they refused to release, tugged at each other, and swaying back and forth they struggled to move forward toward their chosen victims.

Under different circumstances this spectacle would have been rather humorous, but these weren’t different circumstances, this was a life and death situation, and those were my boys that were in grave danger.

I quickly rolled my window down and yelled.

“Lead them into the ditch and kill them, and be careful.”

“We are dad," Billy answered.

"Come over by me Jacob, they won’t let go of the dog’s leg,” Billy shouted.

Without hesitation, Jacob ran to his brother’s side.

“Now they’re coming, just a little bit closer.”

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The two females first dropped to their knees like marionettes whose strings had been cut, then fell face first into the ditch. Their jaws still clutching the leg bone of the dead mongrel even though the tops of their heads were now missing due to the effect of the 7.62 projectiles fired at close range.