Zomblog: The Final Entry (20 page)

I think about those split seconds a lot. If I would have run at my attacker while drawing my blade. If my bolt would have been a few inches up and to the right hitting him in the heart. If. If. If.

My grandpa used to say, “If worms had guns birds wouldn’t fuck with them.”

I am sure there are a hundred “ifs” that would result in Sam still being alive. I got there just as I heard the yelp. I’d never heard my dog yelp before. He didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. And…he was a good dog. Maybe I should have named him something else. Maybe that name is cursed.

When I got there, the man was on his knees with his back to me. I drove my knife into his back—the blade was long enough to stick out of his chest. He fell sideways, but I got a little scared when he tried to climb back to his feet. I have no idea how many times I stabbed him with my spear.

At some point, I stopped. Leaving the spear sticking up from the body, I went to my dog. My stupid mutt. I was still holding him and crying when the sun came up.

There was some sort of industrial-looking complex, and it might have even been an airport, but a nasty fire made it hard to tell. I carried Sam there and found a piece of metal that I could scoop up dirt with. That’s where I buried Sam and covered the grave with a mound of rocks. I think it was noonish by the time I finished. The whole time, I cried off and on. A few times, I had to stop what I was doing in order to put down a roaming zombie or two.

I found a dark, empty, burned out building to hide in and catch a nap. I think God might still exist.

It was late in the afternoon when the earthquake struck. When I woke up, my first thought was that I had been discovered; either by the survivors of the place I blew up or by a herd of zombies. Things were falling and there was that sound. When I realized what it was, I tried to get up, but kept falling down because the ground was rolling.

Finally, it stopped. That’s when I discovered how close to death I had come. Just like that “little” earthquake in Portland, the zombies had fallen over and laid still. I’d guess their numbers to be close to a hundred. And it was obvious right away that they were all heading for the ruins of the building that I had ducked into.

That was another mistake I made that day. I didn’t stop to think about what might have led them to me. I certainly didn’t consider the possibility that one or more bad guys might be out there; much less hot on my trail. I didn’t wait for the zombies to get up. I took off. I did stop off at a creek to fill my canteen sometime that evening around dusk.

When I finally found a place to stop, it was in the cab of a jackknifed semi. I was jut getting comfortable in the sleeper part when I heard something. In a dead world, the voices of the living really stand out, even when people speak in hushed tones. I made sure that my crossbow was ready and then set my big knife where I could grab it quick. If the owners of those voices tried to get in the truck, I’d get one good shot, after that, I would have to rely on my skills with the blade.

I was thankful when they passed. Then I heard that soft, feminine whisper, and the sound of a slap. There wasn’t really a choice as to what I had to do. I waited long enough for the owners of those voices to get a little ways away from me before I climbed out of the truck and started after them.

I got close enough to make out three men and one woman. When they peeled off from the highway and cut into the brush and dirt headed towards the mountain, I almost let them go. After all, I can’t save everybody.

Then they made camp.

These cowboys just picked a spot and flopped down. There wasn’t anything special about it. A few minutes later, they had a little fire going. Then they did what I expected; they turned their attention to that poor woman.

The worst part was listening to what they were doing while I planned my attack. The way I figured it, I would have one shot with my crossbow. I could try for a second, but I needed to have my big blade ready. After taking a few deep breaths, I lined up my shot and took it. Finally a little luck came my way. The bolt was fired from a close enough range that it must have passed clean through. The big man collapsed, and his buddy obviously thought it was because he had just finished. As they were rousing their friend…or at least trying to…I got off a second shot. I risked it and aimed for the face of the man whose dirty grin I could see in the glow of the fire they’d built.

That’s where the plan fell apart. The third guy jumped up and kicked away the fire. How was he to know that it was just l’il ole me? Then I heard an awful shriek and a gurgle.

“Hope you don’t mind fucking a corpse!” the man yelled in the darkness.

I played it safe and stayed put a few minutes before I began creeping closer to where I remembered their camp to be. When I got there, I found three bodies. Feeling around revealed that the woman’s throat had been slashed. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the third man.

Having no desire to stumble around in the dark looking for him, I crept back to the semi that I had been ready to bed down in. It took me a while to cycle down from the adrenaline rush, but when it did subside, I collapsed from exhaustion.

I slept way too long.

When I woke, I was bathed in sweat which added to the yucky feeling from the dirt and dried blood all over me. A pair of roamers were on the road coming my direction. I considered staying put and letting them pass, but if they caught even the slightest hint of me, they’d just turn around and follow.

When I came out of my cab, I waited until the closest one—a teenage girl and way too fresh to be anything other than hours old—made her approach. The strand of intenstines slapping against her denim overalls still looked wet. I put her down and had enough time to reload for a point-blank shot at the other desiccated corpse that made a weird rasping sound that reminded me of a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle for some reason.

The first thing I did after that, was drink my water and refill both canteens before getting back on the move. Of course I had my eyes peeled for any sort of movement or any sign of that third man’s camp. And that is why I diverted my course and left the highway just as it started to cut through this mountain pass. I went north and it slowed me way down. But by nightfall, I was up high enough that I thought I might have a chance at seeing something if that guy made any sort of campfire.

What I wasn’t prepared for was over a dozen!

Like a really spread out starfield, the pinpricks of light were scattered below me. In one spot there was a cluster of several. It caught me completely off guard. It made me wonder how many singles, or small, nomadic groups, I had passed by completely unaware during my travels. It also made me recall that young girl that I put down the day before. How similar to my story or Jenifer’s, or even Gabrielle’s was hers? Was she alone? Did she wander away from a larger group?

The only thing I now feel with a sense of certainty is the feeling of doom that hangs over humanity like the Sword of Damocles.

It wasn’t that I felt any safer, but I did find a spot where I could curl up that night. I slept, for all intents and purposes, out in the open. Under the stars, above all the little fires that burned in the night. The strange thing was that in the morning when I woke and looked around, I couldn’t see a sign of anything that indicated people were camping in the area. I knew the general locations of all of those fires, especially the big cluster, and there wasn’t even a wisp of smoke that morning.

Down on the highway, I could see singles and small clusters of zombies. It’s like they’re drawn to any place where there are survivors. Even out here in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, they roam. I guess they’re looking for those last living souls to feed on. Their biology makes no sense. They should have fallen over long ago…starved.

Staying in the hills all day as I walked probably slowed me way down. But I found myself in a funk and I couldn’t shake it.

Then I saw him.

Even though I never got a look at the guy who escaped that night, I knew it was him. He was walking just as bold as you please down the middle of the highway with a naked woman on a leash. I guessed him to be, at most, a couple of miles ahead of me.

The first problem I ran into was coming down onto the highway. I lost sight of my target at some point, and by the time I was on the washed out remnants of the highway, I couldn’t see him at all. As hot as it was, I did not want to jog. Then there was the inconvenience of putting down the occasional zombie.

I discovered real fast that tracking somebody is not as easy as it looked on television. Between the drag/step mark of the zombies and who ever else passed through these parts, I had no idea which set of tracks belonged to the man I was hunting. Then I reached a T-intersection with another highway heading straight south. Looking each direction it was like being given the choice of which doorway you’d like to use when entering Hell.

After taking out this particularly nasty creeping torso with only one arm that came of some brush beside the road—scaring me to the point that my bladder lost control just a teensy bit—I decided on south. The biggest benefit was the tiny stream that allowed me to stop and freshen up a bit while filling my canteens.

A few miles along, I began to think that I may be onto something. I started coming across an assortment of military vehicles. Late in the afternoon, I turned east off of the main road and found an old, abandoned air base.

The place obviously tried to set itself up as a safe zone of sorts. The fences all had makeshift towers scattered along the perimeter. Unfortunately, it also looks like a horde took down their fence. The good news is that this seems to have happened quite a while ago. There are literally hundreds of corpses—and parts of corpses—all dried out. It also looks like the animals came through for quite a buffet.

I couldn’t pass up the chance to snoop around. After all, I did say that, before all of this zombie stuff, I’d never done much of anything. To go into a military airbase replete with: “RESTRICTED ZONE! DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED!” signs all over the place…you tell me you wouldn’t go in and take a peek.

Liar.

I was never much on the UFO thing. I wouldn’t know Area 51 from the Ronald Reagan International Airport, and any airbase I found out here could be something interesting. When I ducked through the gaping breach in the fence, I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I think I was secretly hoping to find some hangar with a spaceship parked inside like in the movie
Independence Day
. Instead, I found a lot of planes, jets, helicopters, and big pieces of machinery that I had absolutely no idea as to their function.

I think I found some sort of workshop where missiles were put together or taken apart. The coolest find was this bunker with stacks and stacks of what are obviously bombs. They wouldn’t do me one bit of good, but it was strangely cool to see them; stacks and stacks and rows and rows of bombs.

I imagine some of the empty rooms that I found were once full of guns and ammunition. And I imagine that if I were Angelina Jolie or some other female action hero in a movie I would have hit the weapons jackpot. No such luck for Meredith Gainey, child abandoning, angel-of-death to all she meets (especially if they were friends). I found zip. At least when it came to weapons. I did score one major find: MREs and cases of bottle water! That was what made me decide that I was being stupid chasing some ‘Bad Guy’ all around the Nevada desert. I’d already come to grips with the idea that I can’t save everybody.

I’m a little ashamed to admit what happened next. Since I’ve decided I was going to hang out a bit and explore, I found a big basin. I don’t know what it was used for in the past, but I filled it with some of that bottled water and took a bath. I couldn’t do anything about my legs or armpits, much less the Enchanted Forest growing between my legs, but at least I could be clean. I found some liquid soap that smelled like melons and I gave myself a good scrubbing. Then I emptied the basin, refilled it, and just soaked in the lukewarm water.

Before you rush to judge my obvious waste of precious water, unless you’ve gone days or weeks without a proper cleaning, AND had to use ripped up t-shirts during your period, then just shush! It’s not like this place looked to see any living inhabitants in at least a year. Besides, who else would be stupid enough to wonder around in this wasteland? Sure, I saw all those campfires scattered about, but strangely enough, I’ve only actually seen that one sign of a living, breathing person during the day.

And that is why it probably took me a while to realize that I was hearing a child’s laughter. When I came out of the water and quick-changed back into my still-wet clothing that was hanging in the window to sun dry, my first thought was that the zombies had evolved. It would just figure that those bastards would learn how to make a new sound now that everybody pretty much knew about the baby cry noise.

I grabbed my crossbow, which due to recent events and my inability to do some searching, was down to eight bolts. Granted, you only need one, but that makes for a fairly useless weapon. Then I strapped on one knife and snuck down the stairs of the building that I had made camp in. If zombies were around, I wanted to put them down in a hurry before others came.

When I stepped outside, the last thing that I expected was a “family” of four. Of course it was obvious that the children were not from the two adults. Primarily because she was Black and he was Asian and the two little girls were White. Very tan, but white.

Alicia and Min were both from Texas. They were part of a much larger group of survivors which had dwindled down due to some folks simply going off on their own, others dying—of course—and some outright vanishing. They found the girls in Provo, Utah last year when they got stranded due to a fierce winter.

The two are like any married couple I have ever known. They bicker, finish each others sentences, and fret over ‘their’ children. It was Min’s throwing knife that I had barely managed to duck as I stepped out of the doorway. I think the only reason he missed, is because Alicia screamed “Breather!” just as he threw. I think that because I have seen him throw a couple of times since. He doesn’t miss. Ever.