ZOMBIES: Chronicles of the Dead : A Zombie Novel Read online

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  GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE

  We walked back to the garage carrying a few meager items we had collected in the house, mostly food some water and heavier clothing we might need later.

  Fortunately, I had made some preparations in case of a regular emergency, if there is any such thing, by collecting a hodgepodge of equipment. To which I now added to the list, guns, ammunition, and some camouflage army surplus clothing I had acquired along the way. But I was not prepared for anything like this cataclysm.

  My home was in a subdivision and it had too many windows and too many doors, I didn't have a fireplace for heat, a generator for power, or a well for water. It wasn't a place I felt we could hold out for long, from the living or from the living-dead. That belief was confirmed by how easily Jon and Julie had entered the house. I knew I had to find someplace, someplace safe, someplace my family and I could survive this horrific new world that we had been thrust into, but where.

  Then, on the short walk to our garage to survey my inadequate pile of emergency equipment, I had an idea.

  Once in the garage, Billy asked. "How are we going to get our stuff in the van without being eaten? There are eaters in our back yard, and all over the neighbor’s yards. They're probably out in front by the van too!"

  Before now, we had been referring to the "Zombies" as diseased one's, or the infected one's, but after Billy called them "Eaters", well it kind of stuck, and after that, most of the time we called them eaters.

  "We’re not going to put our stuff in the van. You saw what I had to do to our neighbor Julie and you hear all that gunfire out there."

  Billy and Jacob both nodded their heads, affirming that they understood.

  "People all over are doing the same thing to their neighbors. We wouldn't get fifty miles from here in the van. Someone would block the road or shoot out the tires, or the way people were acting when I drove home, we would probably be in a wreck before we got to the county line. In any case we'd end up dead and eaten before nightfall."

  Billy tilted his head slightly to the side and turned up the left side of his upper lip showing his confusion

  "We're not going to walk are we? We definitely wouldn't get fifty miles if we try to walk. Would we?"

  I was able to muster a smile for the first time since this whole zombie thing started. Partially because of the look on Billy's face when he asked if we were going to try to walk to some place safe, and partially because I was about the reveal my idea to my family.

  "No, not the way it is out there now, we will need the van, but not to carry our things, we'll need it to pull our boat."

  "The boat?" Gin asked sarcastically, shaking her head back and forth as if she thought I was going to say that I was just kidding.

  Nodding my head in an effort to convince her that I was deadly serious, I quickly answered her question without a hint of sarcasm in my voice.

  "Yes, the boat, we can't stay here, and we can't drive the van, and we can't walk, the boat is our only logical choice. Hell, logical or not, it's our only choice!

  Look at it this way, in the van or any car for that matter, the roads will be clogged with abandoned and wrecked vehicles, plus we'll need gas and a lot of it if we want to get very far.

  With the boat, we'll just float down stream most of the time, and only use the motor when we absolutely need to. We still might need to obtain some gas at some point, so we'll take that little squeeze pump I have along with us."

  Trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince my family, I said. "We don't know everything this disease does to people, but one thing I know for sure, it's not going to make them break the laws of physics, which means, they can't walk on water."

  "But can they swim?" Jacob asked.

  I thought about it for a moment, then answered. "I don't know if they can swim or not, but if they can't swim any better than they can walk, we'll be safer in a boat until we can find some place to hold up."

  Before civilization as we knew it ended, some zombie connoisseur's blogging on the internet said to go north where it is cold, zombies are made of flesh and blood and are subject to freezing, and once they're frozen, your problem of being eaten by the dead are over.

  The way I see it, the problem with that theory is, you would have to go far enough north that zombies (or as we called them, "Eaters") would never thaw, even during the summer months.

  If you miscalculated and didn't trek far enough north, all that it would take is for one warm front to come through overnight and thaw out the zombie hordes, and you’d wake up to an unexpected horde of nimble zombies intent on having you for breakfast.

  The only advantage I could see by going north into a constant frozen climate was the snow and ice could be melted giving you an abundance of water. That is, until you ran out of fuel for the heat source that you were using to melt the frozen water. Then you would probably freeze to death before you would die of thirst. Not to mention the fact that I was never too fond of cold weather, and the thought of winter all year round for the rest of my life, did not appeal to me, not one bit.

  Besides, going north in our boat would mean that we couldn’t just float down stream; we would be going up stream against the current all the way, using more gas than we could possibly carry.

  Not to mention we would never be able to pass through the locks on the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. Our only option was to go down south to a warmer climate; somewhere that had a lot of wild game seemed to me to be a much better idea.

  Now that the apocalypse was no longer a matter of conjecture, and the zombie virus didn't seem to affect animals, even the feral dogs were just carriers, at least for the moment anyway. So with that said, hunting and eating animals seemed like a viable answer for a food source if scavenging for food in abandon houses was not possible for some reason.

  I hoped my hypothesis on this issue was correct, and that eating the meat of wild animals didn't cause us to catch or spread the disease, because at this time nobody knew how long the incubation period was for the dormant infection, and eating anything that you weren't absolutely sure of was risky to say the least.

  Fortunately, we had enough food in the beginning that we could contemplate this matter at a later time. Although if we were to hunt animals for food, we weren't about to eat a feral dog first to test the theory.

  We lived close to the Mississippi River, and very close to one of its tributaries. Because of this location, I had purchased a small boat to cruise the waterways with my two sons, do some fishing, and generally enjoy the warm summer days. The boat was only a fifteen-foot bow rider with a forty-eight Evinrude outboard motor, but it served the purpose for which I bought it.

  I had named the boat Morphadite, because at the time I thought it was funny, and I still do, even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. However, I never thought I’d be taking a boat as small as the Morphadite on such a monumental journey, but it was all we had, so it would have to do.

  When Armageddon came, there was little time to formulate a plan, most people headed for their local stores and started grabbing things off the shelves, and it didn't matter what. Panic was wide spread and most of the gunshots we were hearing were coming from the direction of a strip mall in our neighborhood, and I didn't want any part of it.

  We would stick to our rough-and-ready plan, and stay away from the stores and shopping malls, at least until things died down a little.

  Our boat's gas tanks were five gallons each and portable, I would usually take them out, drive to the gas station to fill them, and then bring them back to the boat, and put them in again.

  They fit under the back seats of the boat on either side of the battery, which sat in the middle. A gas line ran from the fuel tank to the motor, and when one tank is empty, you simply disconnect the fuel line from the empty tank, and attach it to the full tank, and off you go again.

  "Grab the siphon pump and bring it over here."

  Jacob looked a
round the garage.

  "I don't see it, where is it?"

  "I think it's over there behind that tool box," I said, pointing to an old gray partially rusted toolbox in the corner.

  Sliding the toolbox over and spotting the small plastic pump, Jacob announced, "I got it!"

  Gin picked up the almost empty gas can we used to fill our lawnmower and asked. "Do you want this one too?"

  "Yes, we're going to need all the gas we can take with us!" I answered.

  "Well this one doesn't have very much gas in it!" she said,

  "That's the next problem we’ll have to solve!" I said.

  "How are we going to do that?" she asked.

  "We're going to have to go outside and siphon some of the gasoline out of the van," I answered solemnly, thinking that taking a chance filling a gas can while standing around outside in the midst of a zombie outbreak might be more of a risk than we really wanted to take.

  But, at the time I felt that we would probably need the fuel at some point down the road so to speak, and not having any other gasoline source, the van was the plan.

  "Do we have anymore containers we can use?" Billy asked, as he looked intently around the garage.

  "I don't think so, we have the two boat tanks and the mower can, and that's it," I answered.

  "So we can take fifteen gallons of gas with us, right?" Billy asked sounding a slight bit frustrated.

  "Right, unless we can find something else we can put gasoline into, real quick, and I don't see that happening.

  But the good news is, since I had intended to take the boat out on the river this weekend, the two boat tanks are full, so all we have to do is fill up the one gas can and we're set."

  Gin turned to me with a very worried look on her face.

  "How long will that take? To siphon the gas I mean."

  "Not long I hope; it depends on how much trouble the eaters give us," I replied confidently, unaware of how bad things were deteriorating outside of our house.

  Then pulling my pistol from my waistband, I tapped the butt of the gun saying. "But first things first, we'll need more guns than just this Glock."

  "I'll help you get them," Billy said quietly, sounding somewhat excited.

  "Me too!" Jacob added, with the same excited tone.

  "Let's all go back in the house and take another look around, maybe we can grab a couple of things that we missed the first time," I said, as I led the way into the house.

  I gathered together all of my firearms, ammo, and the relevant equipment that I had.

  We pulled the pillowcases off the bed and put the rifles, pistols, magazines, and ammo in them, and the remaining equipment such as holsters and slings were bundled into one of the bed sheets.

  Each of us took as much as we could lift, and carried it to the garage.

  You never really know how many guns you have, or how much they weigh, until you try to carry all of them at once, including their ammo, holsters, and assorted accessories.

  Passing Gin in the hallway she looked perplexed and asked, "Do we really need all of that?"

  Without any hesitation, I answered her question.

  "Honey, when you absolutely need a gun, there is no substitute! Remember, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. And I think in this case, it seems that the police are never coming."

  Seemingly not totally convinced by my mini-lecture, Gin gave me what might be called a knowing look and said in a monotone voice.

  "Okay."

  The weight of our equipment made the trek back to the garage seem longer than it really was. Even after each of us stopped once or twice along the way to give our hands a quick rest, by the time we got to the garage our hands and arms ached, and we were unable to maintain our hold on the makeshift transporters any longer, and they began to slip from our grasp as we entered the garage.

  "That was harder than I thought it would be," Jacob said, as he rubbed his hands together to get the blood circulating again.

  "You think everything is harder than you thought it would be," Billy said, as he too rubbed his hands together.

  We dumped the contents of the pillowcases and sheet onto the floor in a pile, and we wasted no time preparing to go outside and pump enough gas from our vehicle to fill the remaining gasoline container.

  Peeking out the side and only window in the garage, Billy said. "I only see two on this side; they're just stumbling around out there."

  "We don't know how many more might be on the other side of the garage door. There could be one, or none, or a whole lot more of them! So here's how we're going to do this," I said, with the sound of authority in my voice.

  “We might run into more than just eater’s out there, so we’re going to dress the part, besides, we don't want to go out into a world full of eaters in street clothes, so grab those camouflage uniforms over there. Mine is the multi-cam, there’s some army digital that should fit Jacob. Billy you get older stuff, I think it’ll fit you.”

  “I always get the old stuff,” Billy said jokingly, as he reached for the older garments.

  It was good to hear Billy joking; I hoped it meant that he was getting past the grisly episode in our kitchen with the neighbors.

  Smiling at him, I said. “Just start changing and I’ll tell you the plan."

  As we changed our clothes, I shared the details off my plan with the boys. I call it my plan, but really I was just making it up as I went.

  "Billy, when I say go, you open the garage door, do it as fast as you can, if there are any of them out there we want to catch them by surprise, not the other way around. From what we've seen so far, they haven't demonstrated any semblance of speed. So, I think they're probably not capable of moving very fast, but I don't know that for sure. If they’re close, they could be on us quick. Billy you carry the gas can, and I'll carry the siphon. While I'm sticking one end of the hose in the van's gas tank, you put the other end in the gas can, and I'll start pumping the fuel. Jacob you cover us with one of the rifles, I don't care which one, I would use either the AK-47 or the 9mm carbine if I were you. On second thought, use the carbine, it's better for close quarter’s battle, and that way we can save the AK ammunition for longer range targets."

  Nodding his head, Jacob agreed and grabbed the pistol caliber carbine.

  "Billy, you and I will use pistols, pistols will give us plenty of fire power and we can quickly holster them to free up our hands to do the siphoning," I said, as I pointed to the pile of guns and assorted equipment.

  Billy rummaged through the mixed heap of firearms and equipment we had dumped on the garage floor.

  "I'll take this one; do we have a holster for it?" he asked.

  "That's the 92 right, here it is," Jacob answered, as he handed him the holster.

  Reaching behind me, I pulled the Glock 19 I had used on Julie earlier from my belt.

  "I'll need a holster for this too, it’s in that pile somewhere, Jacob see if you can find it."

  Reaching into our equipment mound, Jacob pulled out two holsters, one in each hand, and held them up in front of me.

  "I think it's one of these."

  "It's this one!" I said, taking the one in his right hand.

  We geared up, and took our positions by the garage door.

  "Billy, look out the window again and see if anything has changed," I ordered.

  Billy moved quickly to the garage window and peeked out.

  "Still only two of them over here," he said as he made his way back to his assigned position at the garage door.

  "Okay, everybody knows what to do, everybody ready?" I asked.

  Both boys replied.

  "Ready!"

  "Okay, on three, one, two, three, open the door!" I shouted.

  Billy tugged hard on the garage door handle, and the spring-loaded door clattered and squeaked as the somewhat rusty wheels road up along the metal tracks.

  As the door opened, and revealed the driveway, our worst possible nightmare had come true, we immediate
ly found ourselves exposed.

  At least fifteen zombies were in the driveway and surrounding area, two of which were within arm’s reach of Jacob. The shrill squeak from the wheels had attracted the zombie's attention, and in the split second that it took to open the garage door, the closest zombies were already on the attack.

  It all happened so fast that Jacob didn't have enough time to raise his rifle to his shoulder. Holding his gun at his waist, he raised the barrel of the carbine slightly, and began to fire the semi automatic gun as fast as he could.

  As Jacob fired the nine-millimeter carbine repeatedly, the muzzle rise lifted the gun up, and before his target's hands could grab him, Jacob’s bullets were smashing into the zombie's face.

  "Close the door!" I screamed.

  Billy had lifted the door with so much force, that when it had reached its pinnacle, it bounced back and was already on its way back down. Jacob had already turned his gun on the second zombie, which had now turned and taken one staggering step in his direction. He again began to rapidly fire his weapon.

  Two more shots rang out, the first one hitting the zombie in the neck and the second one boring its way through the garage door that was quickly on its way down.

  Lowering his rifle, Jacob said. "I think I got both of them, but that second shot, I don't know."

  With my heart pounding, I said. "Billy, make sure that door is locked, we don't know what those thing are capable of."

  "Got it," Billy said, as he jiggled the latch. "They’re all over the place," he said, as he once more tested the door lock.

  Little did we know it at the time, just how much of an understatement that was.

  While Jacob had been dispatching the two zombies, his gunfire had drawn the attention of other zombies in the neighborhood, and they too were now descending upon our home.

  "Holy shit," I shouted. "That wasn't good; Jacob you almost got bit, we all almost got bit! That was stupid!" I said, disgusted with myself.

  "I've always told you boys, laziness will cause you pain. We were so intent on grabbing our guns, and planning how to get the gas out of the van, that we overlooked the obvious," I said sternly, scolding myself more than anyone else, and thinking "so much for making it up as I go."