Zournal (Book 2): Cruising The 'Poc

by R. S. Merritt

  The cart was fairly responsive so I decided I would go at an angle and hopefully get them to all start running towards one side of the bridge then I’d cut across really quick and zip right by them. Ann was giving me space to sort it out and also had a bat out in case she needed to play whack a freak when we drove through there line. The others were right on my tail which I couldn’t determine if that was good or bad doctrine for them to follow so closely. Regardless, we were in it now. I told Ann the plan and she relayed it over Walkie to the rest of our convoy. All the Zombies had started lumbering towards the right side of the bridge as we lined up on that side and sped towards them. Once they had all come far enough over to the right side I turned the wheel hard to the left, almost throwing Ann out of the cart.

  It felt like we went up on two wheels and we definitely skidded a little but then we were headed towards the now vacant side of the bridge to roll right past them. I asked Ann how the others were doing. She was staring behind us intently.

  “Looks like they’re all going to make it. How about next time before you almost flip us over you yell ‘Now!’ or something so I can hold onto something?”

  Having chastised me for almost killing her, she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek to show she was actually pretty happy to be alive.

  “Wanna go play some golf for a first date?”

  “Nah.” She said. “I think the pants you have to wear are super ugly. Nice try though. Got anything I’d actually maybe enjoy doing?”

  I was drawing a blank. I’d seriously just saved her life by driving like a bad ass and all I got was a kiss on the cheek. My breath would probably drop an elephant but still.

  We kept driving, we hit the street where Ann had come up to get the bandages for my eye. Ann evidently remembered as well as she looked over at my very well worn bandages.

  “We need to get more supplies. You and Thomas both need to get antibiotics and clean bandages. Next plaza with a Publix or a drug store we need to hit it. If you get some scope I may even give you a proper kiss.”

  I had been about to say we couldn’t risk stopping for bandages right now. Her last statement totally won her argument for her. Now I was staring around like that fat kid in the Willy Wonka movie in the scene with the gumballs. I was intent. I needed a drug store. Thomas and I probably really did need a drug store but with the extra incentive I was able to find one in the next ten minutes.

  We roared into it, looking like a gang of geriatric bikers on golf carts instead of Harleys. The illusion was not broken by the amount of limping and cussing required for most of us to get out of our carts. We tried the doors, they were locked. We hadn’t seen many Zombies in the last mile or so but knew we had some in our wake so needed to hurry. I snagged the steel pole Thomas always carried around and tried to pry the doors open. That didn’t work so I hammered on them with the pole until they shattered.

  That made a lot of noise. I didn’t care, I was on a mission. I needed bandages, antibiotics, a bottle of wine and some scope. Nothing came running at us from inside the store so it looked like we were safe there. We all had our shopping lists, I hadn’t told anybody about the scope. We were all counting to one hundred then getting the hell out of there with whatever we had been able to grab. Ann and Ginny ran for the pharmacy, Reeves ran for the beer aisle, and I ran around in circles trying to figure out where they sold scope at. Thomas was outside standing guard with a Walkie to tell us if we needed to leave sooner than hundred count.

  I found the scope, I shoved a bunch of crap in some bags as I ran. Cookies, Cheezits, random soups with the pop lids, scope, gum, candy bars, basically all the essentials…

  I really had not made any amazing finds as I counted to ninety in my head and started running for the entrance. I thought I was the first one to make it back when I saw Reeves stacking the back of his golf cart with big cases of warm miller light.

  “Really.” I said, “All the beer in there is free and you still roll out here with Miller Lite?”

  “It’s the champagne of beers.” Reeves said as he sat down in his golf cart and popped one open. He made a whipping noise when he saw I had a big bottle of scope in my hand. Whatever.

  The girls emerged, late, with all the supplies they had been looking for. Before we could go anywhere they went ahead and made Thomas and I take some antibiotics, then they made us promise we’d be swapping the nasty bandages out the next place we stopped. We took the time to pull the tarps down on all the carts and tie them in position. We could hear screams stating to get closer as our pursuers started to catch up so we all got in our carts and started them up. Ann looked over at me when she heard me gargling like a mad man. I pushed the tarp out of the way and spit on the ground. I Grabbed her, pulled her in my lap, and gave her a fierce five second kiss that left us both breathless.

  The radio went off and Reeves voice came out of it, “Hey Boss, if you guys are done making out… Crazy blue cannibals coming into the lot to eat us… But we’ll wait... I mean. You risked all our lives to freshen your breath. Who says romance is dead? But we may be soon. Can we go now please?”

  I gunned the engine and we rolled out. I made sure the scope was well protected. I was grinning hard enough to make my bandages stretch on my head.

  Entry 31: Fresh underwear

  We roared down the road in our supped-up golf carts. Dodging the randomly parked and crashed cars. The golf carts were small and light enough where four of us could pick one up if we hit a spot of snarled traffic that we could not drive around. They were not extremely loud which kept away the attention of the bulk of the Zombies we were probably passing. Just because we could not see them, did not mean they were not there. We had learned that lesson the hard way many times over.

  We took the 295 to 95. That led us into a huge cluster of vehicles and the remains of a roadblock. We searched the roadblock area but someone had evidently already beaten us to it as it looked like all the weapons had already been removed. We were attacked by the odd Zombie but one of them was pretty easy for us to defeat at this point. The Zombie would yell and charge at us, at which point either myself or Reeves would step up and get in a batter’s stance. Thomas would step in behind us waiting to finish off the Zombie as soon as one of us put it on the ground.

  Reeves was taking more than his fair share of the Zombies since my screwed-up eyesight was making it hard to gauge when to swing at the Zombies. I’d had one near miss where an elderly lady had charged in and grabbed me after I completely missed her head with the sword. That experience was enough to convince me it was probably better to let Reeves handle the batting practice for a while.

  Lack of depth perception was going to be an issue if these bandages did not come off soon. We got the carts through the traffic jam and proceeded to go North up 95. We were putting Jacksonville in our rear view and I was pretty stoked about it. First Jacksonville, then Florida. I could not wait to see the ‘Welcome to Georgia’ sign.

  We needed guns. Preferably a variety of them. We needed them to protect ourselves from blue and other colored humans. Right now, a kid with a BB Gun could step out and force us to give him all our stuff. I’m not saying I would shoot the kid, but I’d really like the option. Our team right now was riding around in a handful of golf carts holding baseball bats and knives. This was not going to intimidate anyone with a gun. In this new reality, might made right and I wanted to make sure we were always on the right side.

  We were driving during the day now which concerned me as well. We had not seen massive numbers of Zombies but they had to be around somewhere. The thing was the Zombies always followed noise, that meant there was bound to be some following us as the Golf Carts were quiet, but still the loudest thing for miles in this dead and desolate world. Hiking through the woods may not be any safer. You never knew where some hunter in a deer stand had made his last stand and the woods in that area now had a couple thousand Zombies standing around waiting to hear a noise somewhere else or for me to walk myself into the middl
e of them.

  We were driving during the day because it was easier. There was also the fact that during the day you could see. That may sound obvious but I know back before any of this happened the world was a much lighter place. Street lights, other cars headlights, city lights, house lights, Christmas lights, all of those things used to exist. Now, at night, if there was a full moon you could see. The stars were pretty bad ass now but not extremely useful. Reeves was the only one who had a clue which constellations were which and I think he was just screwing with us half the time anyway. If we ever get Google back the first thing I’m checking is if the ‘Siamese Cat’ constellations tail really points at the North Star.

  My eye is bothering the living crap out of me. Ann won’t let me pull off the bandages yet so we can see what is up. She got to look at it last time and since then she’s just been feeding me antibiotics. She says we need the dropper with antibiotics for my eye but so far we have not found any. We’re all eating antibiotics like they’re skittles. Thomas has the Zombie bite, Reeves has the road rash, I’ve got the eye issue among others, and Ginny just recently got bit by that shark. We’ve all been hanging out in nasty river water and our last real shower was on the boat before we ended up getting attacked by the Navy and our boat sank.

  Ann says the eye bothering me is a good thing but she said the same thing about my skin hurting after I got shot in the chest. She’s had the police officer EMT training so she knows more than the rest of us but half the time I think she is just making shit up too. Between her and Reeves I’m constantly trying to make sure I’ve got the actual story before making a decision. First things first though, we need guns. If we can’t defend ourselves the rest of it doesn’t really matter.

  The good thing is we had made it to the part of I-95 where there’s pretty much nothing for a good long way. The bad thing was we had made it to the part of I-95 where there’s pretty much nothing for a long way. We were stopping every time we saw a deserted car and searching it for anything useful. We had not found much in the way of materials but we did find a young boy in the back of one of the cars, blue veined and still alive after having been stuck in the back of the car for who knew how long at this point. The virus must feed the host somewhere or make it so when they go into a stasis they are not using any energy.

  The boy woke up and slammed his body against the window when we started moving the car. We thought about leaving him there but seeing the young face, marred by the devil’s grimace and blue veins with the red eyes of this disease, we opted to put him out of his misery instead. We’d broken open the window with the pole Thomas used and as the boy wriggled out we beat him to death. Afterwards, I puked and Reeves walked away for about ten minutes. I’m pretty sure he was crying.

  We continued North, not seeing much of anybody or anything. We turned a corner and Ann saw where a police cruiser was pulled along the side of the road. Getting out we saw a very familiar scene. We’d all seen this one a lot at this point and the story was pretty much etched in our memories. The cop must have seen the car pulled over and stopped to see what was going on. Approaching the car, he may have been confused by the former normal family charging at him, screaming, with mouths gnashing together and hunger shining in their red goop filled eyes. This cop looked like he had gotten the man running at him but then probably been finished by the kids or the wife. There was a dead, middle-aged corpse in the road in front of where the cops desiccated body lay.

  The whole scene didn’t really disturb us so much as make us excited, where there are dead cops or soldiers there may be guns! After just gang-beating a kid to death, this fairly typical situation we were looking at now was not enough to move us. The cop still had his gun laying by him and his belt on. His car looked like it had not been ransacked yet. This day had just gotten a lot better! Really weird how the end of the world as we know it can change your perception on things.

  I helped Ann search the cop while the others stood watch. Ann took the guys glock and belt and handed the whole deal to me. I handed it back to her and told her she should carry it. She strapped it on and continued rooting around in the corpse until she declared there was nothing else there. We walked over to the car. The keys were still in the ignition; the car was as dead as it’s driver. Ann pulled out the keychain and went around to the trunk. She opened it up and started pulling out all kinds of goodies. Ginny wandered over and ended up with a pump shotgun and a few boxes of shells, Reeves left Thomas to be over watch and came over and him and Ann split the 9 millimeter rounds between them. Each taking three boxes of the ammo, giving them each a hundred and fifty rounds.

  I had my sword. The whole “one eye” thing was being deemed a handicap to my shooting prowess. Thomas had his stair pole so if it came down to it we’d just be doing things the caveman way. Speaking of Thomas, he had hopped off the car he had been standing on for over watch and jogged over to us. He told us he saw a Zombie coming out of the woods and headed our way. Since we were done stripping valuables from the cop car I went ahead and told everyone to hop back in the carts and roll out.

  I needed underwear. We needed a place to get some fresh clothes and other supplies. We happened to be on a long stretch of desolate highway right now but once we got to an exit I was hoping we could check it out and raid a clothes store or something. A truck stop would be ideal. Close to the highway and hopefully not crawling with Zombies. I was also getting a little nervous about the golf carts. Thinking of all the times we had been saved because we were riding around in something like an up armored hummer and could just sit there while Zombies tried to beat their way in. A puppy could chew its way into my current ride, I probably wouldn’t even see it since half my face and at least one eye was covered in bandages.

  Entry 32: Hurricane Ann

  It is raining like a son of a bitch. Not sure where we are on the road right now but wind gusts keep throwing us around like crazy in these golf carts. The tarps that covered them were not watertight so we were all soaking wet pretty quickly. Big ass signs for a rest stop up ahead were illuminated by the lightning that cracked through the sky like the whip of an angry neon god. I floored the accelerator and started merging on the lane leading off the highway into the rest stop. I then slammed on the brakes as I almost ran us into a large truck parked across both the lanes leading into the rest area.

  Ann was busy on the Walkie explaining the plan was to try and get in out of this monsoon and dry off somewhere while we waited for it to pass. With all of the noise from the storm, I was not hugely concerned about attracting additional Zombies to us since they’d be running around all over the place thanks to the roaring thunder anyway. Or maybe Zombies were scared of lightning and were all huddled in corners sucking their Zombie thumbs. Who knew? This was all new ground for everybody. All of us had mostly survived by luck. There were plenty of better, smarter people than us who were currently either decomposing in ditches or running around mindlessly trying to eat people.

  We were a resilient bunch though. I think the resiliency trait may be the most important thing in surviving this. We all just keep going. We’d been beat up, fell off roofs, shot, shot at, bitten by sharks, bitten by Zombies, tied up, beat up, molested, and all kinds of crap and we just keep going. A lot of people would have given up by now. People like Chrissie. We don’t give up and we have each other’s backs.

  A building started to become visible in the sheets of rain pelting the front of the golf cart. The parking lot itself was a mess so I drove up on the sidewalk and we headed towards the main building. We parked in the concrete covered atrium in between the men’s and women’s room. The wind had picked up so much we had to yell to be heard. I settled for just pointing at the pile of corpses littering the little alcove. Everyone drew their weapons and we got into our standard positions.

  Inside the women’s room there were a few more dead Zombies but nothing else of note. The water was still working which was exciting. We formed back up and crossed the atrium into the men’s room, same thi
ng, some corpses littered the floor. Looking closer at the floor we saw there was bullets casings littering the area. There were bullet holes in the walls and tiles were chipped and cracked and shot up. It looked like whomever had come through securing this area was long gone at this point though.

  We picked the men’s room to stay in since there were less dead bodies. Who would have ever thought a year ago we’d now be making decisions around which rest area bathroom to sleep in based on the number of decomposing corpses in each? Every once in a while, I just get struck by these surreal images and I freeze up for a second. Ann gets it when I explain it to her. Reeves just blows it off and throws out a ‘live for the day’ quote or something like that. Ginny and Thomas were both younger so you think they would have been more adaptable. It turns out they are having a rougher time than the rest of us because they were part of the “I” crowd. They had become used to easily accessible and constant information from the comfort of your couch with your tablet or smart phone.

  I had brought up trying to find some yellow pages around somewhere and the rest of the group had been enthusiastic about the idea. Thomas and Ginny had just kind of stared at me. I might as well have asked them if they want e dot swing by Blockbuster and pick up a VHS rental to watch at home. The information superhighway had been moving people along at such a speed that even the small gap in age between myself and Ginny and Thomas was a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon when it came to a fundamental understanding of how readily accessible is the data you needed.