Cajun Zombie Chronicles (Book 1): The River Dead

by Smith, S. L.

  *****

  “Okay, guys, so we only got one chance at this.” Isherwood was standing with Sara, Tad, and Jerry between the rectory and the church building, where a screen of trees concealed them in front of the St. Joseph’s Building. Gran and Lizzy were still in the rectory with the kids, and they could just see Monsignor’s rifle sticking out the screened window of his upstairs bedroom. “Uncle Jerry’s letting the truck run in front of the rectory,” Isherwood continued. “That should get them massing up. It’s looking and sounding great. The fence, I mean. That leaves the westernmost gate down there relatively zombie-free. We should be able to drive through the grass and parking lots and through the gate before they can get there.”

  “So, Tad and Sara, y’all will slip behind the buildings, keeping a low profile, and approach the gate from behind the Adoration Chapel, while we grab their attention, got it?”

  “You sure you don’t want to take the second CRV?” Sara asked. Her voice was shaking with fear and adrenaline at seeing so many of those things in one place.

  Isherwood shook his head. “If all goes right, I’m hoping we’ll be returning with an extra vehicle, especially now that I know Uncle Jerry can hotwire. We might even pass by the dealership on the way back.” The young man’s eyes glinted at the prospect, and Sara noticed it. She knew her husband had been itching for the kind of shopping sprees that only the apocalypse could offer. And even though they were completely worthless now and madness to risk a life for, Sara also knew that Isherwood secretly had his eye out for a baseball card stash.

  Sara grabbed his arm, taking him aside. She walked him over to the side door of the rectory, where they would still be screened by the trees and palms. “Look, Isherwood,” she said. She was having trouble controlling her voice, while trying to hold back tears. “I just need to make sure. You’re not taking needless risks and leaving us here without you. I know that look in your eye.”

  Isherwood reacted with irritation. He was feeling the tension of time, but more than that he was exhilarated by the challenge. The excitement he was feeling seemed to evaporate at Sara’s words. “I gotta get going,” he said through gritted teeth. But Sara held him back.

  “Isherwood,” she said. “This isn’t some zombie fantasy, okay? This is real, and your family really needs you.”

  “I know, alright?” Isherwood said, sounding exhausted. “That’s why I’m doing this. We’ve gotta clear out the town or nobody will be safe here for long. Eventually, they’ll just overwhelm that fence.”

  Just before Sara could respond, a little voice came from a crack in the side door of the rectory. “Ma-daddy? ky-it, ma-daddy. Shhh.”

  “Em-ma Claire,” Sara yelled quietly. “Get back in that house. Gran! Aunt Lizzy! Come grab Emmy.”

  “We got it, Ishy.” Tad said, motioning with a shotgun. “Let’s get going before they put much more strain on the fence.”

  “Alright,” Sara said, after getting her daughter back under supervision and making sure the doors were locked. Her face was flushed and she disciplined a loose strand back behind her ear. “Alright, let’s do this. You’re coming back through the northwest gate, right?”

  “Right,” Isherwood said, somewhat chastened. “The one by the recyclables container. Okay, let’s go.” Isherwood kissed his wife and squeezed her hard. Both couples exchanged ‘I love you’s.’ Isherwood then stepped out from behind cover and started making straight for the fence and the waiting truck. Jerry followed behind him. He was waving his arms to get the zombies’ attention. The moaning was starting to grow louder. There was little need for that and no need to yell and make sounds, as the loud diesel-engined truck had been left running.

  “Sure hope this works, kid.” Jerry said, as they climbed into the cab of the old F-250, and slammed their doors behind them. They waited there for a few seconds as Sara and Tad made their way to the far gate.

  “So do I,” Isherwood agreed with a dry mouth. “No need to go slowly once the ladies are in position, faster the better for their sake. They’re dim-witted and slow, but the zombies will catch up soon enough.”

  Sara and Tad crept out from behind the far side of the Adoration Chapel. Aunt Tad kept a few yards of distance from the gate, as Sara ran for the padlock.

  “Here we go!” Uncle Jerry announced, and Isherwood couldn’t help but notice the growl of excitement in his voice. For his part, Isherwood choked down the fear in his belly and grabbed the handle above the door.

  They bumped up and down over several curbs to drive across the front of the rectory and chapel. Just as they arrived in the last parking lot to make the turn out the gate, Sara had the gate sliding open. She opened it just enough for the truck to pass. She and Isherwood exchanged a quick glance as they pass each other. God, she’s beautiful, he thought to himself, before being distracted. The distraction was not a zombie, but a smallish man darting back through the gate.

  “Was that Tattoo?” Isherwood called out.

  “What’s that?” Jerry asked. With his poor hearing, he was barely able to distinguish between the truck and Isherwood.

  “Nothing, nothing,” He said, looking backward, as the little man disappeared into the church grounds. Sara and Tad motioned to him not to worry, then gave him “okay” signs as the gate slid back into place before the first zombie was even ten yards away.

  The truck stood idling along Main Street in front of the Poydras Building, waiting for the horde to catch up. Isherwood watched as Sara and Tad disappeared back behind cover. He thought he might have caught a glimpse of them just as they reached the rectory.

  He then turned his attention fully on the three hundred or so glazed and scratched eyes staring at him from the road. Now that they had seen live flesh, the moaning was growing deafening. Isherwood thought how Civil War historians had struggled to describe the sound of the Rebel battle yell. Those that heard it, they said, never forgot it. He thought the moans of the undead must be like this. It wasn’t that it sounded inhuman; it still sounded very human. It was a grotesque perversion of a human voice, amplified by a thousand rotting throats.

  Isherwood shook his head. “Well,” he yelled above the moans and the engine noise, forcing his thoughts back to the job at hand. “This will be slow-going, but hopefully that means simple.”

  “What route’re we takin’?” Jerry asked.

  “Major Parkway. We might even be able to raid the Shell station before we turn north.”

  “Keep it simple kid. One stone, four hundred birds is good enough for one morning.”

  Sara’s words rang in his head just then: optimizing, always optimizing. “Alright, Uncle Jerry. Okay.”

  Not long thereafter, Jerry budged the truck forward. Isherwood settled into his plan, checking and rechecking his two pistol magazines before climbing out the back window into the bed of the truck. He had brought along five 50-round boxes of 9mm ammo. He kept three within arm’s reach through the rear window along the back seat of the truck, and the other two he kept in the bed with him. He also had a battery-powered loudspeaker that he had borrowed from the youth group office at the church.

  There was no need to use pillows to suppress the sound of his pistol this morning. Though he wished he had one of Sara’s nice-smelling pillows to breathe through. The stench was overwhelming. When the wind would suddenly shift upstream of the horde, Isherwood felt like he could smell every one of them. The rotting meat quivered as they staggered forward. Sometimes, he even saw little clumps of maggots drop to the ground, a packet of them dislodged from inside a gaping wound. He kept firing to keep the smell of gunpowder in the air, not just to keep their attention.

  For the most part, he saved his bullets for the zombies that got too close to the front and sides of the truck. He was getting to know his pistol really well with all the extra practice. He was about 50/50 for headshots at forty yards, but was lethal within twenty-five, even from the bed of the moving truck.

  It was unnerving, while they were going so slow, watching the h
undreds of zombies staggering after them. The speedometer said they were going just under ten miles per hour. When Isherwood thought he could almost recognize the individual faces, most of whom he’d grown up knowing, they were getting too close. Every couple hundred yards or so, Isherwood would tap the window for Jerry to give the truck a little extra speed.

  He would go mad if he had to stare back at them, eye-to-eye, from the back of this truck for much longer. The lake was trailing along the left side of the road. It appeared like flashes of green between adjacent houses. He would turn and stare out across it. It was so calm, he half-expected to see jet-skis roaring across it.

  The first time Isherwood turned on the loudspeaker it sounded preternaturally loud, like the roar of some sea beast rising from the lake. The zombies actually stopped in their tracks when they first heard the ping of Isherwood switching it on. The moaning stopped for an instant, like a sudden gap in the water coming out of a faucet. But they lurched ahead in redoubled madness after the momentary shock had worn off.

  “Anybody in St. Maryville,” Isherwood’s voice squeaked out. He cleared his throat and started again, “Survivors, this is Isherwood Smith. We’re drawing the zombies across the bridge. Stay perfectly still until the horde passes you by. When the coast is clear, join us at St. Mary’s Church, our temporary shelter. Bring your supplies.” He repeated the same message every couple of minutes, though the sound seemed to drown in the sea of moans.

  CHAPTER SIX: THE SNAKE

  Looking around at all the grand, older homes along Main Street, Isherwood was sad to see many with open doors and broken windows. He was sadder still to see zombies stumbling out of most of these homes to follow them. Main Street seemed to be the hardest hit. Hopefully, he thought, the sound of his megaphone would carry down the side streets, as well, and would be heard by somebody.

  After what seemed like an eternity, but had only been about fifteen minutes, the old red truck finally turned away from the lake and north onto Major Parkway. A few hundred yards west of this intersection lay the intersection of Main Street and Hospital Road, the other stoplight on Main Street. Most of the larger businesses in town lay along Hospital Road, including the Winn-Dixie, the Wal-Mart, and all the fast food restaurants. Isherwood also expected a second and larger horde of zombies was occupying this road, some of which they might be able to draw off today across the bridge. Or else, it might be waiting for them, having migrated eastward, if they came the same way along Major Parkway – Isherwood had specifically designed his plan to avoid this, and, incidentally, to pass by both of the car dealerships in town.

  “Alright, let’s kick this hornet’s nest!” Isherwood called to Uncle Jerry to accelerate the truck up Major Parkway to where it intersected with a side street that connected to the back of Wal-Mart. Between the intersection and Wal-Mart on either side of the road, there were fields of sugar cane still growing in the fields. The land along the western side of Major Parkway, along the backs of the Wal-Mart and strip malls, was still undeveloped farmland, almost a hundred acres all together.

  At the intersection, which also didn’t require a stoplight, there was a three-story brick technological services building, called the Washburn Building, and a nursing home that was still under construction when the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards got hit with the first waves of zombies. On the east side of Major Parkway was Major subdivision, which Isherwood actually hoped was empty because his plan might inadvertently overrun the subdivision with zombies.

  He had friends that lived in this subdivision, some of his best friends. He had tried to contact them early on, but couldn’t reach them. Last he heard, they had bugged out early, abandoning town. Wherever they ended up, he hoped they would somehow meet up again, maybe even return home to St. Maryville.

  When they reached the intersection, they had put perhaps three hundred yards of distance between themselves and the Main Street horde. He made another announcement on his megaphone, specifically directed to Major subdivision. “Get in your vehicles immediately and come with us, leaving everything behind, or else stay very quiet as the horde passes you by.” Afterwards, Isherwood asked Jerry to lay on the horn.

  Isherwood stoop up in the bed of the truck as it idled. There were about twenty or so zombies that were close enough to be threats. Isherwood took careful aim, trying to ease his nerves which were beginning to prickle all up and down his back like a bad rash. He could feel something approaching from the west. A new wave of moans soon rolled over them.

  “Here they come!” Isherwood said to Jerry, though he knew the old man couldn’t hear him over the din of the horn and moans. As they both watched, a grey haze formed around Wal-Mart and at the end of the road leading to it. It was like a low-creeping fog moving along the horizon. It seemed to be still, but when they blinked they could tell it was moving. The color drained from their faces at the sheer size of the horde coming up from Wal-Mart and Hospital Road. Even Jerry’s dark-tinted Cajun skin seemed ghost-like.

  Isherwood spun around as a new sound erupted nearby. What had he missed? A string of thoughts pulsed through his mind. It was another car horn. Another truck? Two trucks? Zombies don’t drive trucks, he thought to himself stupidly.

  “Hey, buddy,” a voice announced nonchalantly from the first truck, actually a brown Chevy Tahoe. It was one of Isherwood’s old friends from his days teaching at the local Catholic school. He pulled up his vehicle forward out of Major subdivision. Kids stirred in the back seats. Though his wife sat petrified in the passenger seat, the driver looked as calm as a Sunday driver.

  “Patrick O’Hooligan,” Isherwood cried out, temporarily oblivious to their impending catastrophe. Patrick had an almost supernatural way of putting people at ease. He taught English to middle schoolers, who were themselves each tiny maelstroms of hormones and chaos. Isherwood always admired Patrick’s zen-like ability to remain serene at the center of a chaotic classroom. Patrick’s name was Patrick, but not O’Hooligan. It was Patrick Fontenot. He was a track coach as well as a teacher.

  Isherwood turned to face another blur of movement coming out of the neighborhood. “And look who else decided to show his ugly face.”

  “Thought you’d take on the apocalypse all by yourself, did you?” The driver of the second truck, a blue Chevy, called out.

  “Justin, you idiot.” The second driver was Justin Chustz, whose face and that of his wife, Chelsea, in the passenger seat looked emaciated. They seemed to be hiding terror just under their voices.

  “What took you so long?” Justin called back. “We were about to run out of steak and beer.”

  “You poor, stupid fools,” Isherwood called back. “Never been so happy to see anybody … you heard me just now and got in your trucks?”

  “Hey, Ish?” Chelsea interrupted, leaning across the center console. “Sara and the kids? They all made it?” Isherwood assured her that his whole family was intact and waiting at the church. Their wives had been friends far longer than Isherwood and Justin had. Relief washed across Chelsea’s face.

  “We heard you back when you passed by the Shell station, I think,” Patrick called back. “Pretty quiet these days. Sound travels easy. Oh, yeah, and the apocalypse of moans coming this way was hard to miss. You actually didn’t give us much of a choice, buddy.”

  “Sorry about that,” Isherwood grimaced. “It made the choice pretty easy, though, right? So, uh, y’all got the gist of the plan? Lead the pukes over the bridge, circle back, block the bridge. Got it?”

  “What could go wrong?” Justin asked sarcastically. “Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…”

  A clanging sound sparked against the tailgate of Jerry’s truck. “What the …?” Isherwood spun around.

  “Better take care of that, Smith,” Patrick called out. His calm voice held just a hint of an edge.

  It was the leading edge of the Main Street horde. Isherwood popped off five or six rounds until his magazine clicked empty, and then switched out magazines. As
he did, four or fix zombies fell onto their knees or toppled backwards. With the fresh magazine, he finished off the troublemakers, and turned back to Jerry. “Alright, punch it,” he yelled into the cab.

  “Y’all armed?” Isherwood asked as he passed by his friends’ vehicles.

  Patrick shook his head. Justin, however, heaved an AR-15 out his window. “Don’t leave home without it,” Justin smiled.

  “Alrighty,” Isherwood smiled back. “Patrick, you take the middle spot. Justin, you okay with the caboose?”

  “No problemo,” Justin shouted back. “My kids will take over for you, too.” As he said it, a boy and a girl spilled out from the back window of the blue Chevy. Though Justin kept the Armalite rifle for himself, his kids each had .22 rifles. Isherwood saluted in answer, and turned back to face the front of the truck. They were about to pass the Scott Civic Center, where Isherwood and Sara had had their wedding reception several years ago. From there, they would cross over the hump of railroad tracks. The foot of the bridge was another two, two-and-a-half miles after the railroad tracks. They were approaching a little intersection connecting Major Parkway, Parent Street, which was basically the Main Street of the back half of St. Maryville, and Highway 1. Once they cleared this intersection and St. Maryville’s last stoplight, it was just open four-lane highway with wide shoulders and even wider lanes of grass on either side before fences rose to cut off the pasture lands and stretches of timber beyond.

  Even if we can’t get them over the bridge, Isherwood thought to himself as he stood in the bed of the truck, they’ll be as good as trapped inside all these fences. Maybe. Hopefully. It will definitely confuse them.

  Isherwood took one last lingering look across the farmland that stood along the west side of Major Parkway. Beyond these fields lay the backs of the stores that faced Hospital Road. The largest of these stores stood out along the horizon. It was Wal-Mart. If they got through this, Isherwood promised himself, he would soon be back. This Wal-Mart, he knew, held a good supply of guns and ammunition. He was itching to go shopping.