Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  He crawled up to them. He motioned for them to follow him and he led them another fifty yards into the woods. He had them all sit down.

  “Zombies. People are turning into fuckin’ Zombies. No shit, real deal, eat the living, mindless Zombies. I just saw them munching down on that geriatric in the house we just left. Good news, I don’t think the cops are probably going to waste a lot of time looking for us. Bad news, the world is overrun by Zombies.”

  A large, black man, with Bukowski stenciled on his orange jumpsuit and a shaved head coughed into his hand, “Bullshit…”

  That got a couple of laughs. Hernandez probably would have joined in if he hadn’t just been watching the Donner Party hitting the buffet right in front of him. Instead, the comment pissed him off.

  “Alright, Bukowski, crawl over there, quietly, check it out and come back over here and let us know what you see. Need to confirm if I’m going crazy or if I saw what I saw.”

  Bukowski crawled out of there and everyone waited for him to show back up. About thirty minutes later he walked back into the circle of cons. “There’s one guy still trying to chew off her nose. The rest of them are racking out on the floor, blood everywhere. So, ah, yeah, Zombies it is.”

  Everyone stared at him for a minute then looked back at Hernandez for orders.

  “We need weapons and food and we need to avoid being around where a bunch of people used to live. Also, we need to stay stealthy. I have an idea where we might find some weapons. First, let’s sleep for a few hours and then we’ll head out. Bukowski, stand watch for an hour then wake up Jay, Jay, you wake me up after you stand watch for two hours and I’ll figure it out from there.”

  That said, Hernandez handed Bukowski the shotgun, with an admonition not to use it unless they were getting charged by a pack of the Zombies, then lay his head down on his arm and tried to get some sleep on the cold, hard packed Florida dirt.

  It seemed to Hernandez that he had just closed his eyes when he felt Jay shaking him awake. He sat up slowly and looked at Jay.

  “Anything exciting happen?”

  Jay handed him the shotgun and replied, “No, some vague screams and I think some gunshots in the distance but nothing really different than this ‘new normal’. Seems like night is a lot quieter than day time though. Guess even homicidal monsters gotta get some sleep every once in a while.”

  “Speaking of homicidal monsters, help me get everyone awake, that’s a good point about the nighttime’s versus the day time. I’m thinking we need to be moving more at night to stay off the menu.”

  There was some grumbling but everyone got up and started walking the same direction as Hernandez. Mitchell came up behind him, “You know we’re going back the same way we came, right?”

  Hernandez just nodded. He didn’t feel the need to explain himself, especially if he turned out to be wrong. He planned on staying alpha dog of this pack for as long as he could. He marched them for a few hours, the sun started coming up and he called a halt. He said it was because of the sun coming up, which was true, the other piece of it was he was completely turned around and had no clue if they were headed in the right direction anymore.

  He motioned for them all to stay where they were except for Jay. Jay and him moved out towards where Hernandez thought the road should be. He saw the trees clear out and realized after a second or two more of walking that not only had he hit the road he was trying to get to but he also had hit the exact intersection he was looking for. Judging by the look of everything, he had been right in his suppositions.

  The road block had been completely overrun. Bodies littered the ground, civilian, cop, and military. As he watched a couple of people stood up from the road and wandered around. From this distance, they looked very blue and their eyes looked very red. Looking at them he could see that they appeared to be covered in popped out veins which was making them look blue in color. They waited.

  After about two hours Hernandez sent Jay back to tell everyone to stay where they were and that they’d be making there move at nightfall. The plan was simple. Wait for the Zombies standing around to start to rest. Move in quietly, grab the dead soldier’s weapons and clothes, kill any Zombies that moved as quietly as possible, steal a troop truck and roll out. Hernandez had no doubt the plan should work. The only question was if the Zombie’s would cooperate.

  Dusk fell, Hernandez crawled back to where everyone was waiting. He looked around the group. The con who had gashed his side in the fight on the angel’s wing looked fine, just a bit bloody. The guy who had been shot in the shoulder was not looking good. They had not had anything to cover up the wound with or get the bullet out or any kind of sanitization at all really. Looking at how pale the guy had gotten Hernandez didn’t a see a real point in asking him what his name was. He did see a use for him though.

  “Hey man. You don’t look good. I’m thinking these trucks got some medical kits on them with first aid crap that you could really use. I want you to move out ahead of the rest of us as quiet as you can be and see if they have any in those trucks before we get over there and for some reason get blocked from getting back or something. Otherwise, I’m scared you’re not going to make it…”

  Hernandez sent the guy on his way and had everyone else follow to the edge of the woods. The guy got as far as the first truck before he caught the Zombies attention while trying to pull the door open. A Zombie screamed and ran straight at him. Another Zombie came out from underneath a truck, where it had been resting and charged him as well. They took the con down hard and started violently ripping away at him until he was no longer moving. The two Zombies stayed there and occasionally ripped off some flesh to pop in their mouths. Like a couple of stoned teens sharing a can of Pringles.

  The con had served his purpose though. Hernandez now knew there were only two Zombies hanging out by the trucks, the rest of the bodies were really just bodies which was what he had been trying to determine. Looking around the scene he saw several dead cops and guardsmen laying around with their weapons still by their sides. The Zombies had stopped chomping on what’s his name and one was lying down while the other was standing up staring at the door handle to the truck.

  Hernandez looked around at his fellow felons. “Ok. Maximum violence. Let’s move that way slow and quiet. Grab weapons on the way over there, look for knives and clubs and shit like that. We need to take those two out quick and quiet so they don’t have a chance to attract any others. Then we can look around better. No shooting. Everybody got it? Let’s move.”

  Hernandez led the way, his shotgun pointed in front of him in blaring defiance of his on ‘no guns’ policy. The others spread out behind him. Moving as quietly as they could across the corpse strewn intersection. Rolling bodies over they accumulated a diverse collection of rifles, handguns, clubs, Tasers, asps and handcuffs as they moved. Approaching the Zombies, the asps were extended and the clubs came out. The Zombies took a hard and fast beating. Hernandez decided to just assume you had to smash in the head to get them to stop moving so he hammered away with his asp until the Zombie that had been lying on the ground had a neck that ended in a puddle of white bone fragments and gray goo. The other Zombie was shoved to the ground and given a similar treatment, with Jay and Mitchell doing most of the work. Mitchell was smiling while he did it.

  Immediate threats taken care of, they took the time to walk around and do a more thorough job of pilfering the dead. They took the cleanest looking uniforms and boots from the fallen soldiers and put those on, leaving their jumpsuits on top of the dead cops. They treated the military bodies with respect but they had a lot of built up hatred for the cops so those bodies got desecrated every which way they could think of. Hernandez finally had to order them to stop pissing around with dead cop bodies and keep looking for weapons and anything useful.

  The keys were found to a squad car and to one of the troop transports so they decided to take both. They loaded up what they could find into the vehicles and then cranked them up. As soon
as they cranked them up and headed out they were surrounded by Zombies beating on the cars. They accelerated past and through them and got on I-95 headed North. The roads were fairly clear out here in the middle of nowhere so they made pretty good speed. Hernandez saw the next exit had gas stations but not much else so figured it was worth the risk to pull in.

  They stopped at some knockoff gas station and went to take a look around. There were no Zombies around when they did the first perimeter patrol so they went ahead and moved into the gas station. A young woman rushed into Jay’s arms.

  “Oh thank you! Thank god! We thought we were dead!”

  Jay was obviously milking the whole young woman hugging him thing, feeling a bit jealous Hernandez yelled out, “Anyone else here? US Army here to save the day. Come out and we’ll take you to the Evac central station.”

  The rest of the family came out. They had stopped here for snacks when everything went down and the owner had told them they could stay when he left to go find his family. That had been weeks ago. They had been rationing the food, once the power went off they started eating all the perishables as much as they could. There was still a good bit of non-perishable food left. There was Chrissie, the young woman who had hugged Jay and now looked a little embarrassed about the whole thing, her younger sister, younger brother, and parents. They had been on their way to a resort down in the Keys to celebrate Chrissie graduating from UF and being accepted into the UCF medical program at Lake Nona. She had plans to be a Pediatrician.

  The father, Ben, had been in the marines for about ten years before getting out and starting his own duck food business. He sold the machines that people put the quarters in to get the food to feed ducks and gators and whatever else. Turns out that was a great niche and had put one of his kids through college so far. His son was a football player at FSU, first string guard, and looked like it.

  Ben was studying their uniforms carefully. “US Army huh? Hoo Rah. Where you boys based out of?”

  Hernandez and the others stared at each other. Hernandez had used up most of his cover story on yelling US Army when he saw the girl.

  “Looks like you been in a pretty good fight to looking at all the rips and blood on your uniforms. Are you ok or do you need any of that looked at? My daughters been in school and I’ve see plenty in action myself. What unit are you guys with? I may know somebody you work with.” Ben looked around at them expectantly.

  Hernandez made his choice, “Shut up and sit down or die.”

  Ben had seen enough hard men in his day to know Hernandez was speaking the truth, Ben knew he was probably dead, his only play now was to try and help his kids make it out. “Ok. Ok. I’m sitting down. What’s the problem? There’s plenty of food around here.”

  “Yeah, but not enough women to go around old man.” Hernandez shot Ben and then turned the gun on the son and shot him in the stomach.

  Leaving them lying on the floor bleeding out and moaning in pain he grabbed the mom and threw her over his shoulder, yelled at the others to grab the two other women and follow him out to the car. They handcuffed the women and threw them in the back of the transport truck. They could hear yells and screams coming from all around now, attracted by the double shots Hernandez had fired off. Hernandez left the door to the small gas station open to give the Zombies easy access to the two dying men laying inside.

  Moving along the road they continued to look for a good place for supplies. They saw the signs for a discount warehouse off 520 and pulled in to check it out. They saw a huge herd of Zombie’s around it though so they headed further down the strip and found a mini mart that had not been looted yet. They systematically stripped the mini mart of everything that looked good. Then they headed down a side road where some of the Zombies who had been tracking them by the noise of their vehicles had to be put down.

  They saw a large clearing, which turned out to be a cemetery and drove into it until they found an oversized house in the middle of it. They locked the women up in the room outside to use as they felt like. It became a living hell for the women. The men went out at night and looked for other survivors. They would drag back others and use them or torture and kill them. Some they killed slow cause Hernandez wanted to see how to make a Zombie. Some they had Zombies attack, then waited until they turned into Zombies and killed them then. The experiments were all over the place and only got crazier as Hernandez and the rest of them began doing all of the different drugs they found in the pharmacies around them on their night raids.

  Bukowski was the one who killed their mom. He came in, high, and tried to grab Chrissie, the mom yelled for him to leave her alone. He beat her to death with a trash can lid then threw her in the dumpster they used to dispose of their ‘lab rats’.

  Hernandez and the others talked about a group that had occupied the local Sam’s Club. They tried to get close and see what was going on in there but the herd kept finding them before they could figure anything out. Then someone put bags of pet food or something in front of the main windows so they gave up for a while and focused on partying instead. They did keep regular watches though and Hernandez had strict rules about being sober on patrol to try and keep them from all getting killed.

  The day a patrol came back and said a group had left the warehouse and were holed up at the guns and ammo store started out as a great day for Hernandez and crew. They figured they were fixing to get more entertainment and slaves to do their work for them. They loaded up, leaving the women with a couple of new bruises and a warning to keep their mouths shut.

  A couple of hours later, all hell broke loose and the next and last time Chrissie ever saw Hernandez, he was lying in a pool of blood on the floor after I had shot him in the face for trying to take us prisoner. Chrissie spit on his faceless body and never looked back as we drove away in the hearse and the pot shot from the over watch shattered the window. The shot actually made her happy as she knew that Jay was the one standing watch out on top of the house that was burning down all around him. Seemed a very fit way for him to start his journey to hell.

  Entry 6: Hearse ho!

  There was a good thirty seconds of silence after Chrissie finished telling her story. She had learned most of it while held captive, listening to the guys talk while she waited on them. Hernandez had taken a liking to her so she had been beaten and abused less than the other girls at that nightmare of a house. I heard movement to my right as Ann scrambled up and headed over to give Chrissie a hug. I followed suit and within a minute it had turned into a hugfest. All the girls were tearing up, none of the guys were though, I just had allergies. I wanted to tell her she was safe now and nothing like that would happen to her again but I couldn’t get the words out. I knew better than to make promises I wasn’t sure I could keep.

  Instead I just said, “We got you now Chrissie and we’ll all be doing our best to help each other through this thing.” I had to stop talking cause my allergies were kicking in again.

  I went and set back down by where Ann had stolen my blanket. She wandered back over and sat down next to me with my blanket wrapped around her.

  “Are you crying?” She asked.

  “No”

  “Cause your eyes look a little red.”

  “I have a lot of allergies and we’re in the middle of the woods.”

  “Ok, because I thought it was sweet that you were crying.”

  “I wasn’t crying.”

  “Nightie night crybaby.” With that Ann rolled over, wrapped in my blanket, and settled in to get some sleep.

  I set there for a while, planning out in my head what our next moves should be. Also, sleeping on the ground sucks. Especially sleeping on the ground without a blanket, which is why I had brought a blanket. I figured we could head back the way we had come once it started getting lighter out. It was a risk doing anything in the daylight, but at night we would never be able to see the hearse if it was stopped on the road somewhere.

  What if everyone died because Reeves and I couldn’t let go? />
  I put my head on my arm and lay down in the dirt. It took a little bit of time but eventually I fell asleep. Reeves nudged me awake before dawn.

  “I let you sleep in. Time to get up and get rolling. Sun will be coming up soon.”

  I pulled my aching body to a standing position. Stretched out and looked down at Ann. She was wrapped in my blanket but at least she looked semi-miserable so that made me slightly happier. What I wanted more than anything was a hot coffee and a shower. What I got was Reeves handing me a bottle of grape flavored water and one of those little boxes of raisins.

  “Breakfast of champions. If you’re done making yourself presentable, what’s the plan?”

  I told Reeves my plan, Ginny had wandered over to listen, Ann was propping herself on an elbow listening as well. Even though everyone in the group, except Reeves and I, had voted against trying to follow the hearse no one had complained or said a word against it once we had decided to go for it. Everyone got their packs thrown on and there weapons out in their hands. As a group, we headed back the way we had come, moving as quietly as we could in the woods and pausing every few minutes to listen for sounds of any Zombies headed our way.