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

  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.

  Back to Contents

  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 a
nd 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.

  The gunfire had drawn more zombies to us faster than we had expected, considering we could hear gunshots in the distance coming from all directions.

  I’m sure it was just because of our life threatening dilemma that it seemed to us, that we were the only ones being targeted by all of these crazed killers.

  “Move those ladders and get back here, hurry!” I yelled as loud as I could.

  “We gotta go, more of them are coming!” Gin screeched, as she hastily scanned the area for more zombies.

  “Hurry, get in!” I screamed, as three of the newly arrived zombies were now within five yards of our vehicle and stood between the boys and the safety of the van.

  With their rifles slung over their shoulders, and with panicked looks on their faces, the boys picked up the last ladder that was blocking the road. With one at each end, they ran side by side back toward the van, and using the ladder as a weapon, they took down two of the zombies by hitting them neck high and pushing them into the ditch along with the ladder.

  As the boys tossed the ladder and the two zombies into the ditch, they left the third diseased monster staggering toward my window and lined up in the sights of my Glock 19. I quickly took advantage of the close range shot by dusting off the skull of the zombie with two well-placed shots in rapid succession, sending one bullet crashing through the front teeth of the monster on its way to the Medulla Oblongata, and the other one directly into the middle of its forehead.

  The zombie dropped dead onto the asphalt just inches away from my window, as the boys ran to the van and jumped in.

  The side doors were still open as I pushed down on the gas pedal hard. The tires squealed as we swerved around the cable truck and the dead mutt’s remains and continued on our trek to the river, allowing the remaining assaulting zombies still in the ditch with the ladder, and the ones that were arriving late onto the scene, to concentrate their attention on the two dispatched female mutants, the zombie I had neutralized, and the damn dog.

  "I guess they like dead animal flesh too," Gin said, watching the zombies feast on the deceased K-9 as we drove away.

  Glancing into my rearview mirror and seeing the brains of the original two female zombies being munched on and fought over by even more newly arriving zombies, I added.

  "Evidently, flesh is flesh, and any body part will do! But it looks to me like they consider brains a delicacy"

  The boat launch was only about 3 miles from our house and the dog in the road, was about half the way there.

  After a few more minutes on the road we could see the boat ramp, and what we thought were several abandon vehicles, some with empty trailers, and some without trailers at all.

  This might indicate that some had been left by fishermen already on the river when this thing broke, or that other people had the same idea as us, and got to the river before we did.

  However, because the ramp was clear of abandoned vehicles and trailers, the most likely scenario was that anglers were already on the river at the start of the zombie apocalypse.

  Either way, it meant that at some point we were likely to encounter other people on the river.

  Pulling up to the boat ramp, I reminded everybody.

  “Just because we don’t see any danger at the moment, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be in great peril at any time. Those eaters back there came out of nowhere. If it can happen back there, then it can happen here. We have to hurry! We can take it a little easier once we're on the river."

  I turned the steering wheel hard to the left, and maneuvered the trailer into position so that I could back it into the water.

  “Boys loosen the straps and everyone into the boat,” I ordered.

  “I’ll hold onto the boat while you park the van dad,” Jacob said.

  “No need to son, we won’t be coming back, get in the boat.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jacob said sheepishly as he and Billy continued to release the stern of the boat from its trailer.

  “Look out dad!” Billy yelled, just as the cracking sound of Jacobs's carbine ripped through the calming sound of the small waves breaking on the shoreline.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  "Got'em dad," Jacob proclaimed, smiling.

  “Where did those two come from, I didn’t see them until Billy yelled and they were almost on me,” I said, feeling my heart pounding wildly in my chest. "They scared the shit out of me, figuratively speaking of course."

  “They were behind that tree, they must have just been standing there until they heard us,” Billy said.

  “We are going to have to be more aware of our surroundings if we want to stay alive, we of course meaning me," I said aloud this time.

  "Let’s get out of here,” I said, as I gave the boat a shove and hoisted myself up and onto the bow.

  “Start it up Billy. Jake, open the air valves on the gas tank," I commanded.

  Billy started the motor as I made my way through our hurriedly packed supplies, and took my place at the boat’s controls.

  As the sky became dark and the warmth of the sun abandoned us, I slowly maneuvered our little craft toward the middle of the river where the current was the strongest.

  I took one last look back at the dock, and at my mini-van that I had abandoned there.

  That solitary vehicle left there on the boat ramp. That familiar mini-van that I had driven for so many miles, sitting there alone by the water's edge, sadly reminded me once again that we would never be returning to this place.

  The river was high, but not even close to flood stage as we putted out to the middle, and as we did so, a cool breeze began to blow in from the north. We were on our way to parts unknown, and we even had a tail wind to help us on our journey.

  There was no turning back now.

  Back to Contents

  THE RIVER

  "We didn’t have much time to organize our stuff back there, so let’s get some of these things moved around a little and everyone find a spot to bed down for the night. Billy, go up front and watch for anything that we need to be concerned about, and take an extra drum magazine up there too,” I said, pointing at the shoreline with one hand and handing him an AK drum magazine with the other.

  “Do you want me to shoot at the eaters on the shore?” Billy asked, looking a little puzzled.

  “Not unless they pose a threat to us, and out this far that is highly unlikely,” I answered. “But that doesn’t mean we'll never shoot one of them on the shore. There are going to be times that we will be in very close to the shore, and I don’t know how far these diseased dead people can jump, or even if they can jump, and I don’t want to find out.”

  Turning to Jacob, I said. “You make sure you help your brother keep watch, especially keep an eye on the bridges we’ll be going under, who knows what will be on them.”

  “Okay, the currents pretty strong here, time to turn off the motor and drift," I said as I turned off the Morphadite's outboard and our boat began to sluggishly float down stream. "We only have so much gas, and we don’t know when or where we can get more. So we’re going to stick to the plan and drift most of the way. The only time we’re going to start the motor is when we get too close to the shore and we can’t paddle back out into the current, or we need to high tail it out of Dodge in a hurry.” I said, trying to get my point across before they were told that on
e of us was going to have to stay awake, and on watch at all times.

  Then Gin inquired. “Are you saying we’re going to just drift along at this slow pace, it's going to take forever to get anywhere?”

  “That’s right, it will, but if we run out of gas we’re going to end up drifting anyway, and we won’t have any way to get out of trouble quickly if we need to,” I replied. “And I have a feeling we’re going to need to at some point!”

  “I guess you’re right,” Gin mumbled. “I mean what’s the hurry anyway; we don’t know where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there anyway, right?”

  “Right, at this point that’s about it in a nutshell,” I said nodding my head.

  “Let’s put one of the oars in the front of the boat and one in the back, that way we can push things away from the boat or push the boat away from the shore at any angle,” Jacob said, as he reached for one of the oars.

  “Yeah," Billy said. "And we can use them as a club if we need too, instead of firing a gun and drawing the attention of other eaters in the area.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Gin said, handing the second oar to Billy.

  As the night wore on, we each burrowed out a small area to sleep in among our stacks of supplies, then I announced that I would take the first watch and assigned Billy the second, and Gin the third, and Jacob the last one; each of us taking a two and a half hour shift.

  To my surprise, there was no resistance from anyone regarding the imposed sentry duties. I guess they all realized that it was a necessary evil and an unavoidable chore that had to be done to ensure the safety and security of our family.

  Although the temperature dropped to an uncomfortable level that night, we didn’t suffer too much, as our coats, blankets, and sleeping bags were thick enough to keep us warm, and the gentle rocking of the boat on the river along with the pillows that Gin insisted on bringing, allowed us to get some sleep.

  The night passed uneventfully, and the sunrise signaled the start of the first full day of our journey south. It was to be the first of many days that we would never forget on our way to our new life under the dark cloud of the horrific disease that had taken over the world.