Zournal
Book 2
“Cruising the ‘POC”
R S Merritt
Text Copyright © 2016 Randall Scott Merritt
All Rights Reserved
Dedicated to my family. Especially to my wife, who picks up the slack while I work on projects like these.
Table of Contents
Entry 1: Where am I
Entry 2: Rollin’
Entry 3: That answers that
Entry 4: Bea’trayal
Entry 5: Prison Break
Entry 6: Hearse ho!
Entry 7: Rendezvous
Entry 8: Sardines
Entry 9: Baby blue
Entry 10: Gator bait
Entry 11: Adrift
Entry 12: I’m on a boat!
Entry 13: Margaritaville
Entry 14: Floaters
Entry 15: Hells Jetty
Entry 16: Sinking
Entry 17: Still Sinking…
Entry 18: Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
Entry 19: 90210
Entry 20: A walk on thin air
Entry 21: The Thunder Rolled
Entry 22: Feet on Dry land
Entry 23: Talk like a Pirate Day
Entry 24: Sleepyhead
Entry 25: Movement is Life
Entry 26: Out of the Frying pan…
Entry 27: Dain Bramaged
Entry 28: Don’t worry. Be happy!
Entry 29: Adrift
Entry 30: I am Ironman
Entry 31: Fresh underwear
Entry 32: Hurricane Ann
Entry 33: The Pink Angels
Entry 34: Running just as fast as we can
Entry 35: Thank You for Visiting
Entry 1: Where am I
I woke up, disoriented, startled awake by the pain in my chest. It felt like someone was ripping out really large hairs, slowly. It was dark and smelled like the alley behind a bar, piss and puke times a thousand. I was laying on my back, looking up I saw a pair of beautiful brown eyes looking down at me, Ann, with a pair of tweezers dropping something into the bottom of the whatever I was in. A hearse, I was in the back of a hearse a bunch of us had been living in for a few days now on the run from Zombies. Hence the horrible smells. I was disoriented because Ann had given me some pain pills and valium so she could poke around my chest and pull out the birdshot that was embedded in me, courtesy of the full-frontal blast I had taken in the fight at the cemetery house.
My chest was covered in some kind of gunk that I assumed was either blood or some sort of antibiotic cream. Ann snapped at me, “Stop touching your chest, I’m trying to pull out all these pellets so you don’t die of an infection and god only knows when the last time you washed your hands was.”
She was right. I had no idea when the last time I had washed my hands was. I pulled them off my chest and laid back down and tried to slip back into unconsciousness. That wasn’t easy as she continued to poke and prod and it felt like the pain medicine must be wearing off. I worked hard to avoid cussing at her but finally I had enough, “Are you almost done or are you planning on ripping my entire chest off one square inch at a time?”
“Thank you Ann, for pulling the pellets out of my chest that were going to infect and kill me.” Ann said in a high pitched whiny tone as she completely ignored me telling her to stop and continued to poke and prod at my chest. Finally, she seemed to be done and pulled out a bunch of gauze and bandages and a big tube of antibiotic rub. She slathered me up and put on the gauze then wrapped the bandages around my chest and upper torso to hold them. By the time she was done, I am pretty sure she had attached an entire shelf from the drug store to my body.
“Thank you Ann.” I said as sincerely as I could muster. Sitting up slowly, testing the bandages strength, I asked, “Where are we?”
“Parked behind a CVS off I-95. We squeezed through the traffic jams and made it up a few exits before pulling over. You’ve been out for about a day. So far, no Zombies have shown up despite your screaming and moaning every time I pulled a pellet out of you. I don’t see how you even felt the pain through the drugs I shoved into your system. I think you were just bitching for the sake of it.”
Ignoring her last little comment, I sat all the way up and looked around. My crew seemed to be spread out around the cars. It was dark which explained why everyone was not cowering in the cars. I saw Reeves and Ginny were standing at the end of the car where they could easily assist Ann as needed.
“Where do you want to go for our first date?” I asked Ann.
“Oh, I thought you had forgot about that. How about you take me to Vegas?”
“Sounds pricey, plus the only show in town is probably the ‘Blue Man’ group at this point. Would you settle for a can of beefaroni and a few glasses of wine in the back of a hearse that smells like someone tipped over a port-a-potty?”
“Umm… No. Keep working on it. I’m going to go put these supplies away. Now that you’re bandaged up we should probably keep moving down the road while we still have some darkness left.” Ann pulled herself out of the hearse and shoved all the bandages and such into the duffel bag she had determined would be our main medical closet. She zip tied the handles together and threw it over her shoulder to take and put in the front of the car. We had already lost one person to an overdose and she was trying to make sure it did not happen again.
I looked down towards the end of the car where Reeves and Ginny were still standing. I painfully moved my way towards them until I was sitting on the back bumper of the hearse.
“What’s the plan then guys?” I asked.
Reeves looked at me, “Glad to see you’re feeling better, boss. Seemed a bit touch and go there for a bit, you really do whine a lot when you’re in pain. Just saying. Sounded like a freakin herd of Zombies was back there with you guys. Anyway, plan is to keep jamming North at this point. Stop periodically for supplies and gas. If we see some better, less smelly cars we may trade those out as well. We’ve been sticking to the original plan and headed towards that Tennessee cabin of yours but basically just want somewhere that isn’t as freakin hot and humid and gross as Florida.”
The sounds of a body being beaten to the ground accompanied by a Zombie scream had Reeves and Ginny lifting their weapons and me looking around trying to figure out where my mine were. Reeves started moving around the hearse.
He looked over at us and shot back across his shoulder, “I’ll check that out and get the other Hearse rolling. Sounds like the natives are getting restless though. Time for us to get out of here. Why don’t you two slide on back in and I’ll let Ann know to fire up your chariot and head back onto the interstate before we start getting any more guests.”
Entry 2: Rollin’
I slid awkwardly into the back of the Hearse, awkwardly maneuvering myself up towards the front of the car. This required crawling over all the random gear and supplies we had shoved into every available space. I wedged myself into a semi-comfortable position and tried to ignore the burning pain emanating from my chest. Ann had said the burning feeling meant that it was stitching itself back together and that I was getting better and would just end up with some weird looking scars. I asked her if she knew that from her medical training. She admitted she had seen something similar on an old TV show and was basically just saying crap to make me feel better. Also, that it might have been a movie about a vampire that got burnt by the sun.
What did make me feel better was the valium and fistful of Tylenol she handed me. I downed the pills along with a bottled water while I waited for everyone to load up. Ann and Glenda were driving the Hearse I was in with Jamie, Thomas, Chrissie, Bruce and Lily shoved in with me. Reeves and Ginny were dr
iving the other Hearse with the married couple, John and Bea, along with their son Gregg and the twins, Carly and Carl. Bea had stepped in to take on the mom role for the twins since Brenda had died defending the twins in the cemetery fight.
Once everyone was settled in, Reeves came on the Walkie and asked if we were good to move out. I acknowledged it looked like we were good to go and we headed out of the parking lot. We wove through some stalled traffic towards the on ramp to I-95. We made it up the ramp with minimal issues. A couple of Zombies attracted to the noise of the vehicles ran for us and smacked the windows and sides of the cars with their hands. We left them behind as we accelerated up I-95 towards Jacksonville.
Reeves came on the Walkie again and said there was a large number of stalled cars up ahead and he was going to try and go around. He wanted the second hearse to stand by while he made the attempt. Ann and I both confirmed over the Walkie and waited for him to try going around on the side.
He came back across the radio, “Hey boss, I was going around and the front wheel collapsed or fell in a hole or something. I’m going to get out and check it out, then see if we can salvage this vehicle or if we need to find another one or squeeze in with you guys.”
I acknowledged the transmission and moved towards the back of the vehicle to get out and go see what was going on. I winced in pain as I crawled over everyone. I ended up bumping and scraping my chest quite a few times. I got to the back and opened the door long enough to get out, I turned around and shut it again and then moved up to the front of the vehicle and tapped on the driver side window.
Ann looked out the window, “You should be laying down and letting your skin stitch back together.”
“I know. Healing the way Dracula does, maybe drinking some blood would help it work faster. I’m going to go check and see how Reeves is doing. I don’t like being stuck like this with half our team in a jacked-up ride. I’m going to head over and see what he has managed to do to his tire.”
After letting Ann know what I planned on doing, I started up the emergency lane towards where the traffic jam started. Moving forward, I began to be able to make out the details of the hearse but there was no noise as Reeves had killed the engines already. Killing the engines would hopefully reduce the number of Zombies attracted to them. I radioed him to let him know I was approaching.
“Hey Reeves, I’m coming up on you guys now. Just want to make sure I don’t get shot or anything.”
Bea came back across the radio, “Hey Steve, front tire looks pretty much trashed. I think we need to transfer everybody over to your car. Me and John are standing watch while Reeves screws around with the tire. We’re only going to give it a few minutes then just move to your car if we can’t get ours moving. I’ve got Gregg trying to get the supplies together inside the car. I think I’m seeing some movement over in the traffic jam but not sure.”
The sky was starting to lighten up and visibility was improving. This allowed me to finally see the huge traffic jam we were stuck behind. Judging from the signs overhead this was where I-4 merged into I-95 so we had made it a decent distance since our last stop. As the sun rose, it glimmered off the top of the cars causing it to look like there was a wave of motion on top of them. Reeves and the others had the back of the Hearse opened and everyone was getting out. I hit the radio button and asked for Bruce and Glenda to come help as well so we could get everything transferred as quickly as possible.
I waited for Bruce and Glenda to reach me and directed them to the cars while I kept watch over the mass of cars. I saw a dingy looking man with bulging veins pull himself up on the roof of a car about fifty feet from the Hearse. He started scrambling towards the group trying to get the car unloaded.
I hit my talk button to warn them and remind them to take out the Zombie as quietly as possible.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Someone, I looked up and it appeared to be Bea who had done it based on how she was standing, had shot at the incoming Zombie several times with a shotgun. She had missed. She had been loud. The screams and moans started about three seconds after the noise of her last shot died down.
I depressed the talk button and yelled, “Forget the supplies, just get to the other vehicle. Head to the other Hearse. Drop everything. I repeat. Go. Run!”
I shoved the Walkie back into the pocket of my cargo shorts and sprinted towards Reeves and the others with my sword in one hand and the other holding onto various other things I had attached to myself. Items hanging off me included my handgun, which wanted to flop around everywhere as I ran, even though noise discipline had been shattered already.
I skidded to a stop when I hit the group who was running the other direction towards the hearse we had just left. Reeves was carrying one of the twins and John had the other one. Bea was in the rear with her shotgun pointed towards our perimeter. The screaming was coming from all around us and I saw Zombies breaking out of the woods and scrambling up the slope of the intersection to get to us. It looked like maybe a couple hundred had been hanging out in the massive pileup of cars and they were all popping up and running towards us.
We were running down the emergency lane and I saw Ann had pulled the Hearse up as close as she could get it so we could all pile in.
I pulled my Walkie out and pressed the talk button while running and trying to get my gun out of the holster. I pressed the talk button and yelled, “Guns out! Fire at will! Guns out!” I figured noise discipline at this point was a joke and we had a better chance making it out with some covering fire versus beating our way through with baseball bats, hockey sticks and the fire poker that John swore by.
Trying to do all that stuff at once had me all screwed up and I dropped my gun on the ground. I cussed and stopped and turned around to grab it and Bea ran into me. We both fell on the ground and I yelled for everyone else to keep going while I scrambled to my feet and turned around to pull Bea up. Directly in front of us Bruce and Glenda had turned to see what was going on.
With a loud smack, they were sandwiched between two Zombies who started ripping at them with teeth and fingers. I opened fire on the Zombies and knocked one off but two more came and the whole group went to the ground. More Zombies were coming at us from both the slope beside the breakdown lane and the mass of cars sitting all around us. I kept moving forward, acquiring targets and pulling the trigger of my nine Millimeter. All around me the rest of the party was doing the same. I kicked the bodies of the Zombies off of Bruce and Glenda, neither were moving so I left them and continued moving along the slope of the breakdown lane towards the Hearse.
Ann had pulled the Hearse to within about thirty feet of our position and we continued to move forward, shooting as we went. Ann popped out of the car and stood there with a rifle taking shots as often as she could, helping to keep the Zombies off our back. Lily and Jamie were also out and taking shots as fast as they could. I saw Thomas trying to get out to help and Lily pushing him back into the car.
In front of me, a Zombie broke through and ran straight at Reeves. Reeves was running with one of the twins held to his side like a bag of laundry. He had his baseball bat held awkwardly in his other hand. I saw him use the bat to poke the Zombie and then he spun in a circle and kicked the Zombie while still holding the kid tightly to his side. The Zombie lost its forward momentum and went back a few steps, someone put a bullet through its head and it collapsed to the ground.
I looked up ahead at the hearse to see a Zombie riding Jamie to the ground while more Zombies started rushing the Hearse. The gunfire was loud but I had gone through all my rounds and now was holding my sword in front of me ready to start swinging it. Reeves was the first one to get to the Hearse, he threw the girl twin, Carly, into the front passenger seat and then pulled out his sidearm so he could get into the fight.
Bea was right behind him and John came huffing and puffing up carrying the boy whom he threw in on top of Carly. I yelled at Ginny and Bea to jump in with the twins and lock the door, then I headed towards the back of the hearse. Lily was
still standing there trying to load a shotgun, Reeves stepped up and covered her while she was reloading. The back door popped open and Thomas yelled for us all to jump in. All of us squeezed in and I grabbed my Walkie out and pressed down on the talk button.
“Go! Go! We have to get out of here.”
“Going, is everyone in?” Ann came back on the Walkie as I felt the hearse jerk forward and we all felt the bumps as Ann drove straight through the first wave of Zombies.
“Everyone is in. Get us out of here or we’re dead.” I never hesitate to state the obvious.
Visibility was pretty much non-existent from the back of a hearse surrounded by Zombies, after a couple of tries to look out I pressed the talk button again, “Ann, what is the status up there?”
Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc Page 1