Reeves picked up speed as we got past the final Zombie sentries. It had been like driving through the waiting line to get into hell. I was glad we were taking a boat out of there because whatever we had just driven through I did not want to have to repeat it. We came up to an onramp where a car had slammed into the waiting traffic and caused them to jam into the center of the road. No one had cleaned up this mess so we had to use the winch on the Hummer to get around it. Nervously looking around us the whole time expecting to see a throng of Zombies coming for us at any time. We got the car pulled to the side and proceeded down the road.
Another few miles and we could see we were not going to be able to stay on the interstate. The cars were piled up in front of us too thick for us to drive through for what looked like forever. The transport started backing up and Reeves followed. We started hitting some of the wake we always had to worry about as the Zombie who had been following us got a chance to catch up since we were now going backwards. A lot of them were trying to climb into the back of the transport which could end up being a problem since we didn’t have anyone in the back of the transport. We were going to have to fight however many ended up hitching a ride with us.
The ones who were not able to get up on the transport where jumping on the Hummer instead. There really wasn’t anywhere Reeves could go except straight back and he couldn’t go any faster than the transport so we were kind of stuck with picking up hitchhikers. Hitchhikers who screamed their heads off while beating on the Hummer with their heads and hands and feet. Hitchhikers who made no secret of wanting to get in and eat you alive.
Behind us, the transport stopped and flashed its lights. We saw that we could just turn enough to get on the on-ramp going down to the street below. We slowly made the turn while the Zombies beat on the outside of the Hummer. We were pretty much driving a tank as far as fighting Zombies. The transport was not in the same situation. It had regular glass for windows and the back was covered in canvas. Stopping for a minute with Zombies crawling up to beat on the glass was no easy task for them. I was watching in the rearview as the cab of the transport was getting covered with Zombies trying to break in. No way they could even see how to turn down the on-ramp.
Then I started hearing the booms of a shotgun over the screams of the Zombies. I guess the windshield wipers weren’t doing the trick as I saw Davis leaning out his window and blasting away at Zombies with the shotgun. The transport picked up speed and soon we were both on the road below the interstate driving along at an unsafe speed while we tried to make it through before attracting too many more Zombies. We were forced to zigzag all over the road to get past the stalled cars but at least there was a path forward down here. Not sure why people had died in their cars when there was a bypass down here but who knew what it looked like the day it all started to happen.
The side road we were on ran into a large street that we needed to cross to continue towards the ocean. It was packed with cars. There was no way we were going to get through that mess. We had random Zombies showing up again. Attracted by our headlights and the noise of our engines and the screams of other Zombies who saw us. Cleaning off our windshields periodically with shot guns wasn’t helping either. The more noise we made the less likely we were to make it out of here alive. It really sucked that no matter what happened we couldn’t just abandon the transport. No way where we going to be able to run down the street dragging that bomb along with us.
We backed up and went south on the first cross street then over a few extra blocks to be on the safe side before trying to get across the road again. This time it worked and we were able to make our way across it. We kept that up for another two hours. Slowly working our way towards the port that on a regular day was probably a fifteen-minute drive from where we started having to drive all over the place from.
Through some very creative driving we were able to make it to beach road. This is the creatively named road that runs along the beach. It took us forever to get there. So long in fact that the sun was starting to come up. There was a large construction site we’d passed where they were building more multimillion dollar homes for the ridiculously rich tech geeks who lived in this area. I always wondered where in California the guy who works at the bowling alley or 7-11 is able to find a place to live? No way they could afford a home within an hour’s commute of where they worked. I guess the fight for fifteen ended when the first Zombie ate the first bank teller.
Instead of risk busting into a house right now we decided we’d drive into the deserted lot and just sleep there for the day. It was going to suck but so did about half the other things we had to do on a daily basis. We all agreed that what would suck even more would be to attract a large number of Zombies by driving down the beach road during the day. At night, we were going to attract some. We actually had about ten Zombies hovering around the Hummer right now that I could see from my spot in the back seat. Pressing on just did not seem like the wisest move.
We drove the long way to get into the construction site and parked by a bunch of heavy dirt moving equipment. We filled our tanks up with diesel from the big barrel of it that was sitting there and started getting back in our vehicles to hide for the day. We’d done the diesel as fast as we could to avoid being spotted. It would have sucked to run out of gas when being chased though. Myself, Reeves and Davis had gotten out to handle the refuel. Others had disappeared to take advantage of the port-a-potties scattered around the construction site. I’d offered to walk Ann over to one and guard her but she’d told me I better stay away.
As we were talking and walking back to the vehicles two Zombies came busting out of the back of the damn transport. We’d checked in the back before filling up the tanks by making some noise and waving the canvas around. That should have gotten any Zombie in there to jump on us. These West Coast Zombies seemed different in some ways than we were used to. They were slightly more docile. We were going to have to change our tactics and adapt or end up dead. Assuming we didn’t end up dead right now.
One of the Zombies had Davis on the ground and was trying to bite him while Davis held him off with a hand wrapped around the Zombies neck. Reeves was also down on the ground except he was flat on his stomach and a Zombie was biting him in the shoulder. I saw him trying to roll to get away but the Zombie had him pinned down. I pulled out my Kabar and jumped on the Zombie that was on Reeves. A third Zombie then jumped on my back and started trying to bite me. We were like a freaking giant Zombie sandwich now.
I started stabbing the one below me while simultaneously throwing my weight to the right and rolling to get the one off me that had jumped on for the ride. I felt the Zombie on top of me slip. I rolled over quickly to get on top of him. I slashed the Kabar across his face as he tried to raise his mouth to bite my wrist. I leaned forward and put all my weight into driving in the point of the big knife through the Zombie’s mouth and up into its brain. I kept pushing until the Zombie stopped moving. I was covered in blood and I think at least some of it was mine. I remembered Davis had been on the ground.
I jumped up and spun around to help. Davis, Walker and Reeves were standing around another dead Zombie on the ground. Wilson was shining his flashlight around in the back of the transport looking for any more stowaways. He called it clear and backed out. Where was Ann?
I freaked out and took off running towards the big blue outdoor “sanitation stations.” As I got close to them the door on one opened and Ann came out with a pack of wet wipes in her hand. She looked at me like I was crazy. She saw the blood and her expression changed to one of concern. I asked her if she had not heard the fighting and she said she hadn’t heard anything. I nodded at her and told her she should probably avoid K-Mart cans of Beanie Weanies if it was going to lead to this kind of situation.
She hit me in the shoulder then apologized and started using wet wipes to get me cleaned up. Once all of us were cleaned and bandaged and given drugs we crawled into our respective vehicles to try and get some sleep. Covering oursel
ves with blankets so we weren’t recognizable as humans. No other Zombies had found us so we should be good to sleep here. We set a watch rotation and settled in for an uncomfortable, long, boring day.
Entry 24: Anchors Away
I drew the first watch. I was still wired from the fight and my body was killing me so I didn’t draw it so much as say that I didn’t mind staying up until my pills started kicking in. I didn’t know if they’d be able to wake me up or not once I passed out so I figured first watch was a smart move. That worked for everyone else. Reeves and Davis had just been beat down by Zombies. We all knew the reason it had happened was because we were getting tired and sloppy. Wilson decided to take all the blame on himself and had apologized to the point that Reeves had finally lost it with him.
“First off. Officers don’t apologize for doing stupid shit or we’d never have time to get anything done. Second. You’re in charge of this group but you’re in charge the same way I consider Steve in charge. We need to have somebody to make the calls when its tight and we don’t have time to talk about it. We had plenty of time to talk about checking the back of the trucks. Steve even saw Zombies jumping in the back of it and he didn’t think to check it either.”
“Reeves is just mad because he got butt-humped by a Zombie.” Ann scored a point. Nice. I saw Reeves thinking about if he wanted to make a comment as to where Ann had been when this all went down and then he visibly stopped himself from making the comment. Good choice. Also, thanks a lot for throwing me under the bus.
Wilson appeared to get better after some banter. I knew he was feeling the stress. We all were. We were almost within site of our final target and it was starting to get very real. We were fixing to go try and set off a nuclear weapon on a beach and blow up a big chunk of San Diego. Add to that the fact that we were getting attacked by Zombies every time we turned around and I saw how tempers could start fraying a little bit. I wasn’t sure a nice long nap in the middle of the day sitting up in cars was going to help anybody. I looked around, still no Zombies. I sat there looking around and tapping out entries on my phone until I felt sleepy. Rather than risk falling asleep and looking like a major slacker I went ahead and poked Walker to get him up. He sat up, looked me in the eye and he said he was taking the watch.
These guys were way more formal about this kind of stuff than we were. Of course, Ann and I had both fallen asleep on watch before and not told anybody. I only knew it had happened to her because I’d woken up having to pee and seen her leaning against a tree log, fast asleep. I had a nice picture of it to use as blackmail if I ever found anybody I could show it to who would care. Since I had been properly relieved of my duties I went ahead and went to work on getting some sleep. Easier said than done, sitting up in the back seat with a stiff as hell neck and new parts of my body hurting from the attack.
The pills must have finally kicked in. I blinked a few times and looked around. It was dark. I could barely make out the transport. I could hear the sounds of everyone sleeping. My neck pain had not been improved by the upright sleeping position I had assumed. I felt around on my body and made sure I knew how to get to all my weapons. I opened the door. We’d removed the bulbs from the inside of the Hummers as one of the first things we did to keep them from lighting up every time we had to take a leak in the middle of the night. I stepped out into the chilly night air. I could smell the ocean and hear the breakers rolling in.
Looking around carefully I chose a spot where I felt kind of safe and started taking a whiz. Looking up in the night sky as I went it was crazy how close the starts looked. If any amateur astronomers had survived the apocalypse they must be loving the lack of the glare from the city lights that had made the stars seem so far away. I never remembered seeing so many of them or seeing them so bright. You could easily tell where the Milky Way galaxy was. I sat there staring at the stars until I realized I was in a pretty exposed position and had something sticking out I would not want a Zombie to bite off. Zipping my pants up I walked over to the transport to talk to Wilson.
I kept my hands raised high in the air and coughed a few times as I walked towards them to make sure they didn’t think I was a Zombie and shoot me. It occurred to me they couldn’t shoot me without making noise so they’d have to beat me to death if they thought I was a Zombie. For about the millionth time I mentally made a note to try and find a cross bow store. How cool would it be to be able to shoot Zombies without having to worry about the noise? Also, did Zombies cough?
Looking through the driver side window I saw Davis leaned backwards with drool running down his chin. He looked like he was immensely enjoying the opportunity to get a little shut eye. I walked around to the passenger side where Wilson was hanging out with his window rolled down.
“Hey Steve.” Wilson whispered over to me. “You want to get your guys awake and I’ll get Davis here up and we can go ahead and try to make it to the marina? Hopefully we can just drive down the beach road until we’re there. Hardest part of today should be figuring out what color yacht we want to snag.”
I grinned at this attempt at humor and walked back to the Hummer and started nudging everyone awake. Once everyone had gotten up and taken care of their morning rituals we rolled out. We led the way with Ann driving, me riding shotgun, Walker in the turret and Reeves in the back ready to jump out and do whatever. Ann took us back to the beach road via the hard-packed sand of the empty lots we had spent the day in. We were driving with our headlights on, sacrificing stealth for the ability to see what was in front of us. There wasn’t a ton of stealth involved when you were dragging along a transport truck full of gear anyway.
We hit the Beach Rd and started driving down it. The occasional Zombie popped out but we were moving at a decent clip so they did not cause any issues. We were driving in parallel with the Coast Hwy. The Coast Hwy was pretty backed up with cars. The Beach Rd was not. There were piles of sands and large amounts of debris in some places. Not too bad considering no one had been cleaning the area for the last two years and there was bound to have been some pretty decent storms blowing through here. Hopefully, those storms had not trashed all of the boats docked at the marina. Hopefully, there were still boats docked at the marina
We drove the Beach Rd until we ran into San Juan Creek. We had to merge onto a larger road at that point and that road led us up to Hwy-1. Hwy-1 was a no go. It was bumper to bumper with rusting cars and dead bodies. We cut over the median into a large parking lot and worked our way through the parking lot and into a smaller parking lot that allowed us to hop a curve and get into the marina. We started driving around the marinas and could see where a large number of the slips were empty. Boats had been a popular way out when the world started going crazy.
I was getting worried until we worked our way deeper into the marina and boats started showing up in our headlights. Most of the ones we could see looked pretty nice. If you were living in this area and had a boat you probably were not doing too bad financially. We needed to snag one of those boats, load the nuke and our other gear on aboard and get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. I had Ann stop the car and I got out and asked Walker which one we should try.
“I’m looking. We want a large boat that preferably isn’t too high off the water since the Koreans will have radar up and running. We can do one of those fishing boats but we need to see if we can find one without the flying bridge. “
I got back in and we continued driving. We were moving fairly slow now and eventually Walker knocked on the roof a few times to get us to stop. Ann stopped and flicked off her lights and behind us the transport rolled to a stop as well. They had not been using their lights at all since they could drive well enough by following Ann’s taillights and it was better not to light up the Hummer for the world to see by turning on the transports headlights. In the distance, we could hear the occasional yell of a Zombie. I’d been hoping they all slept as good as the ones we’d seen on the bridge. Unfortunately, it did not sound like that was the case.
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br /> We waited while Wilson and Walker went to check out the boat Walker had seen. It looked like all the other boats to me except not as tall. I gathered the shorter it was, the harder it was to detect on radar. That sounded good to me but I didn’t see how we were going to avoid being seen on radar anyway. The only way our attack worked is if we went in fast and got out fast. Preferably before they got around to sending anyone to check out the fishing boat sized blip on their radar. Wilson jogged over a minute later as Walker went and started working with Davis to get the transport turned around and backed up over to the dock.
“Get your stuff together. We’re going to take that boat and hope we can get it started up. Reeves, can you get on the gun so I can take Walker with me to work on getting this boat going?”
Reeves finished getting his gear strapped on and levered himself into the turret. He made sure everything was loaded and ready to go if needed then waited. Ann drove us a little closer to the dock and her and I got out and got our gear on as well. Once we had our gear on we both snagged a twenty-two-caliber rifle with scope out of the back of the Hummer. These guns wouldn’t kill a Zombie but they’d put him down and make it difficult for him to make it over and eat us. They also were not extremely loud. Once the Zombie’s started showing up and there were too may for hand weapons we’d switch to the twenty twos. Once those were no longer enough we’d switch to the fifty. By then we should be ready to board our getaway cruise.
Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown Page 13