by Will Lemen
"Cool," Billy said. "But I thought you wanted to save our ammo for when we really needed it, and didn't want to attract any undue attention to ourselves?"
"That was before the pirate ship," I replied. "We have tons of ammo now, way more than we can possibly carry without a vehicle. And we don't know how long it will be, or how far we'll have to go before we can commandeer one.
As for attracting attention, we'll probably attract so many eaters to the riverbanks and surrounding areas by firing the guns, that anyone that's out to get us is going to have their hands full with all of the crazed eaters running around.
Besides you can never practice too much, you know what they say, practice makes perfect.
Plus, it will give us something to do instead of being bored to death for the next couple of days."
We spent some time going through the heaped hodgepodge of weapons we had collected from the pirate's boat.
First, we separated the rifles from the pistols, and then we paired them with the proper ammunition for each gun.
Then we chose the weapons we wanted to shoot, and took turns picking targets for each other.
"Remember, it counts as a miss if you don't hit them in the head," Jacob said, taunting Billy.
"I never miss! Haven't you been watching?" Billy replied jokingly.
"Keep an eye on the one with the red hunting cap," Billy said, as he leaned the barrel of the M1 carbine he had chosen to shoot, on the side of the boat.
"Boom!"
The muzzle blast of the gun sounded seconds before the report of the powerful military rifle echoed back to us off the cliff face near the far riverbank.
The zombie dropped to the water saturated ground by the edge of the river as its red hunting hat was ripped from its head and fell onto the muddy terra firma as well, along with chunks of its brain, hair, scalp, and skull (possibly a couple of teeth too).
"That's five for me. Who's next?" Billy gloated.
"Anyone can do that using the boat as a rest. Stand up and shoot like a man, off-hand, like this," Jacob pointed out, as he stood up, shouldered a world war two bolt action rifle, and blew the top of an zombies head clean off.
"Did you see that, the bullet lifted the top of its skull off like a trap door, and ejected part of its brain out and onto that other eater?" Jacob announced as he laughed.
"Yeah, yeah, I saw it, that was nothing watch this," Billy insisted as he took aim at another zombie.
The boys bantered back and forth shooting the undead that wandered the riverbanks and turning our first practice session into somewhat of a competition resembling the game of H.O.R.S.E.!
"Okay, my turn," Gin said, standing, and raising the Winchester 30-30 lever action rifle she had picked.
"Pick out a target for me honey, don't make it too hard!"
"Too hard?" I answered. "You did pretty well shooting at those pirates; you shot them before I even knew what happened."
"Yes, but they were a lot closer than these eaters are, and they didn't have all of those flies swarming around them," Gin replied with a smile. "I think that makes them harder to hit."
"Okay hit the fat girl; she should be easy to drop!" I said laughing.
"Very funny, her head is still pretty small from this distance," Gin retorted, making a pre-shot excuse just in case she missed.
"All of their heads are small from this distance mom, that's what makes it fun!" Jacob remarked as he pressed the trigger back on his rifle and harvested another zombie.
"No, fun is when I hit them, that's when it's fun for me," Gin pointed out.
"Boom!"
The lever action rifle reeled Gin back.
"This thing kicks more than I thought it would," Gin claimed, lowering the rifle and rubbing her shoulder. "I think I like shooting the pistols better."
"Maybe, but you need to learn how to shoot as many guns as you can, you never know when we might have to employ a battlefield pick-up," I stated, hoping she would understand that philosophy.
"You need the practice mom, you missed the fat chick," Jacob said, pointing out the obvious.
"You were holding the gun wrong, you weren't holding it on your shoulder right," Billy instructed as he proceeded to demonstrate.
"See like this, with the butt of the gun seated snuggly in the small of your shoulder."
"I guess all those trips to the range paid off," I boasted, watching Billy instruct his mother in the art of properly holding a rifle.
"Yeah, thanks dad," Billy declared sarcastically, as only a teenager would. "You were my inspiration."
The sound of our practice session drew many zombies to both sides of the river from the surrounding areas. At times there were as many as seventy-five to one hundred undead targets staggering around at the edge of the water, staring, drooling, and snarling at us.
Again, like earlier in our journey, many tried to follow us along the banks of the river, but were soon blocked by steep banks or thickets of bushes and trees, the one's that we didn't shoot I mean.
Even if they could keep up with us, at some point they would have to wade into one of the tributaries that spilled into the mighty Mississippi, and they weren't about to do that, at least not yet. For at this time, still none of the zombies dared venture into the water, for now their hydrophobic tendencies proved stronger than their seemingly insatiable appetite for human flesh.
"Can we move in closer to the bank and use the pistols now?" Gin asked, as she was frustrated with all her missed shots.
"Okay honey," I said. "But we'll have to keep the motor running, there are an awful lot of eaters, we don't want to get too close and get overwhelmed."
"I'm going to shoot the Berretta pistol," she stated.
"Nobody is going to shoot any of the 9mm ammunition; we can carry twice as much of the 9mm, as we can the .45 cal. stuff. So we're going to shoot those Colt 1911s. The Colts have more knock down power, but the Berretta holds more ammo, just like my Glock. It doesn't do any good to knock down an eater, they just get back up. A head shot with a 9mm is just as good as a head shot with a .45, except the .45 takes out bigger pieces of the eater's brains."
"We'll practice with the Colts. Thanks to the pirates we have plenty of ammo for them, and we won't be taking them with us when we abandon the Morphadite anyway," I countered.
"All right, that sounds like a good idea, give me the one with the snake on the grip," Gin said, seeming ok with my decision.
With the motor running, we eased toward the shoreline, the closer we came to the zombies that awaited us, the more frenzied they became. Vicious growls, drooling snarls, and snapping jaws, greeted us as we slowly made our way to within ten yards of a tightly grouped horde of the living dead.
Putting the boat in neutral, I watched my wife release a half full magazine from the 1911 and insert a full magazine back into the pistol, then perform a press check by pulling the slide back slightly to view the large .45 cal. round that was seated in the chamber. Satisfied that her gun was now fully loaded, she then let the stainless steel slide slam forward allowing the gun to go into battery. She was now ready to harvest the hungry zombies drooling before us.
She lifted the handgun to eye level, and without a moment's hesitation, she let loose a withering barrage of full metal-jacketed projectiles that slammed into several of the undead.
We all watched as the back of the head of one of her intended targets splattered across the face of the zombie standing directly behind it, knocking both of the reanimated corpses to the ground.
"Way to go honey," I said enthusiastically. "Seven shots, one eater minus the back of his skull, one blinded by bone fragments, two with massive spinal cord injuries, and two more with debilitating skeletal trauma. I guess you really do need to practice, you missed one," I jested.
Gin laughed, and exclaimed. "Yes, I do need to practice, give me another magazine!"
Billy quickly tossed her another fully loaded magazine.
"Here mom, see if you can do it again."
Dropping the empty magazine from the bottom of the gun, she again loaded the pistol, pushed down on the slide release, and began to fire upon the stumbling mass of former humanity.
As she fired her pistol into the crowd of wavering zombies, more grayish-yellow with a tinge of pink brain matter was mercifully released from the calcium-fortified enclosures that sat atop the necks of her victims and splattered onto the bodies of the surrounding horde.
Not wanting to be left out of the pistol portion of our practice session, the rest of us joined in the impromptu one-sided firefight and accompanying zombie massacre.
As we fired our pistols we watched pieces of our targeted zombies explode onto other nearby and still standing living dead corpses just as Gin's had done.
However, as the gruesomely sloppy skirmish continued, we were all so caught up in the macabre action that we failed to notice one of the many wounded zombies that had fallen into the water, had in its panicked flailing to exit the river, inadvertently made its way to the back of our boat and had managed somehow to climb in.
While doing a magazine change, Billy was the first to see the gory intruder in our boat. It had made its way forward, and was now only a couple of steps from Jacob, who was oblivious to the immediate danger.
"Look out!" Billy shouted as loud as he could; trying to be heard over the sound of three Colt 1911s, engaged in a rapid fire drill.
It was no use; none of us could hear him screaming the alarm. The noise from the guns and the loud ringing in our ears from the many previous shots had deafened us to his warning.
With his gun empty, Billy was left with no other choice if he wanted to save his brother, another method of termination would have to be employed.
Gripping his 1911 as tight as he could, he lunged toward the intruding undead cannibal, and swinging the pistol like a hatchet; he buried the magazine-well of the gun deep into the top of the attacking zombie's cranium, releasing the living dead life force of the animated monster back into the wild.
With the attacker neutralize, Billy stood over the carcass that was now oozing bodily fluids onto our food supply.
We had killed a multitude of zombies on the shore, and as we each in turn ran out of loaded magazines for our Colts, we could now hear Billy over the ringing in our ears shouting.
"Hey look, stop shooting and look!"
Looking behind us, we saw Billy pointing to the dead zombie that he had dispatched, which was discharging its putrescent secretions into our boat.
"How'd that thing get in here?" Gin quickly asked.
"It's ruining our food supply, we have to get it out of here," I yelled.
Dropping my gun, I scurried over to the festering body and began to pull on its arm, attempting to drag it to the side of the boat.
"Don't just stand there, help me Billy," I scolded. "Jacob, steer us back out to the middle of the river before something else happens."
With a plethora of new zombies descending onto the nearby riverbank with a hungry desire (pun intended) to replace the soulless corpses that we had just dispatched there. Jacob jumped into the pilot's seat of the Morphadite and shoved the shift lever forward out of neutral, thereby engaging the prop to the motor. As he did so, he turned the steering wheel to the left and we sped back out to a safe distance from the infested riverbank.
Billy and I dragged the blood-oozing zombie's remains to the side of the boat and dumped it into the river, while Gin threw much of our now tainted food over the side as well.
"That little exercise almost cost us dearly," I said.
"We don't want to do that again, that was stupid," Gin admitted.
Billy then added.
"We just went in too close, we need to stay further out."
Jacob had been quiet up to this point, but he now agreed.
"A lot further out!" he said with an amount of authority that he had yet to acquire.
"Well I think we've had enough target practice for today," I told my family. "We'll do it again tomorrow, only at a greater distance, and I think we might need to start using some hearing protection too, my ears are still ringing.
I have some of those foam earplugs somewhere in this pile of stuff. We're all going to go deaf with all the shooting we're doing, we can at least use them during practice.
Let's eat and get some rest, as usual we don't have any idea what's in store for us tomorrow," I said while picking through the food that we still had on board.
The following morning we were awakened before dawn by a thunderstorm that brought torrential rain to the river.
The thunder woke us up before the rain arrived, so we were able to throw some tarps over most of our supplies, and raise the boats canopy.
We floated down the river until well after sunrise, huddle together under the boats canopy to stay dry.
"I'm bored," Jacob said, almost whining.
"Me too," Billy said frowning.
"Okay, we've gone through a lot of hardships on this trip, and we're probably going to have to endure a lot more in the coming weeks, months, and maybe years," I responded. "So we're not going to let a little rain defeat us, are we? Let's look on the bright side, the rain has dispersed most of the flies, so I say we grab a couple of guns and get even with a few of those epidermis eaten sons-a-bitches. Are you with me?"
"Sure," Jacob said.
"Me too," Billy added as the frown melted from his face.
"I'm with you too, honey," I heard as my wife chimed in. "This will be like shooting fish in a barrel, the way they're all clustered together."
"Good, I'll find the hearing protection, and you guys get some guns and ammo," I said, as I began to grope through one of the backpacks we had transported from our former home.
After finding the earplugs and handing them out to everyone, I asked the eager shooters.
"Everyone got their earplugs in?"
"What?" Billy said jokingly.
"Yes, we're all ready, let's start getting even with those evil bastards!" Jacob yelled.
Two of us used the Colt pistols, and two used the shorter AR-15 carbines we had liberated from the river pirates.
The range was at the limit of the .45 cal. pistols, but in our confined space, trying to maneuver four rifles even short-barreled ones, would be too much of a chore and potentially dangerous to our health.
It rained most of that day, so we spent a good deal of the time shooting at the unfortunate undead from a seated position within the restrains of our boats rainproof canopy.
By the end of the second day of so-called practice, we had put a serious dent in the excess amount of ammunition we had seized from the pirates, and a serious dent in the zombie population that lined the riverbanks on our journey south. All of which were huddled together under trees and any other shelter they could find to avoid the relentless rainfall.
Few of them even noticing us floating by them, as their fear of the water falling from the sky overwhelmed their hunger for flesh and their most favored of rare delicacies, human brains.
Gin was right when she said that using these huddled masses of fearful cannibalistic killers for target practice would be like shooting fish in a barrel. If it were for our penchant for making head shots, it wouldn't have been any sport at all.
We ended up tossing several guns into the river because we had exhausted the ammunition for them, and we still had more guns than we could carry.
When the rain did finally stop, the clouds gave way to blue skies and we removed the protective tarps covering our supplies.
Raising the canopy was quite a lot of work, not because it was hard to put up, because it wasn't, it just rotated up and snapped onto the windshield, the hard part was moving everything we had laid on top of it during our rush to get our supplies packed in the boat.
We decided to leave the canopy up. If we took it down it would not fold all the way to the deck as before, it would lay on top of the supplies that once covered it and would really be in the way. It would be easier to duck under it while
moving around the boat, than it would be to constantly step over it or to move everything again to get it all of the way down.
Moreover, if it rained again it would already be in place, and when it wasn't raining, we could use it as a sun shade.
Not to mention, it would impair the ability of any rouge zombies to move around our craft freely if another one gained access to our boat.
After almost two full days of shooting different guns, and sending thousands of rounds of ammunition down range into the brains of our undead enemies, thereby destroying a mere fraction of the zombie populace. Not to mention some constructive criticism, friendly competition, and friendly critiquing, we were becoming quite good at making head shots on zombies at a variety of distances, and with a variety of firearms. We decided that we would continue our daily practice sessions until our surplus ammunition ran dry, or we came near to our departure zone on the river. Whichever came first?
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FOOD SHORTAGE
We initially thought the damage was minimal from the zombie that had boarded the Morphadite uninvited, and through its ultimate demise had rendered part of our food supply uneatable.
However, as we foraged through the remainder of our stores, we found that the diseased fluid secreted on them from the marauding zombie had contaminated even the cans.
We couldn't open them with the John Wayne can opener without pushing the now dried emission into the contents of the can.
We surely didn't want to wash the cans off in the river, and we didn't want to assume that washing the cans with what was left of our drinking water would clean them well enough to insure our safety.
"I can only find two cans of food that for sure have not been affected by that eater," Gin said, as she held up two cans of green beans for inspection.
"Then get rid of everything else, throw it in the river," I said with disgust.
"Jacob, have you still been keeping track of how many days we have left on the river?" I asked.
"Yes dad, about two and a half, to three days left," he answered.