Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

  Reeves decided to join in the conversation, “Is the plan to try and board this place up and stay here forever? Florida was pretty much uninhabitable until the invention of Air Conditioning. I’m thinking it may go back to being that way.”

  Ann took that one, “I think that needs to be on the table. The supplies in here aren’t going to last forever.”

  “I don’t think we should go anywhere. I think we need to stay here and ration our food until this all blows over. I don’t want to bring my babies back out into that craziness.”

  “Brenda, everybody, no need to stress those decisions tonight, like Ann said this is a free forum to throw ideas and thoughts around so we can try and be as prepared as we can be moving forward. I for one feel like enough thoughts have been thrown around and we should start focusing more on the wine and less on the ‘whine’.” With that bit of extreme cleverness, I popped the top on the warm silver bullet I had been saving for this moment and enjoyed the appreciative smiles and laughter.

  Entry 33: Hair of the Dog

  I woke up with a very naked Ann wrapped around me. What woke me up was someone yelling my name. I blurrily looked around but there was not anyone in the room. In my drunken haze, I finally figured out it was the radio talking. I picked up the Walkie and pressed the talk button, “Steve here, what’s going on?”

  “The herd is here and they’re pressing on the front doors!”

  The voice sounded like Hank. What caught me off guard me was Hank was not prone to getting scared sounding like that. I depressed the talk button and asked him to give me a run down.

  “They started showing up about an hour ago. I figured everyone was sleeping so I just stayed quiet and noted the ones that showed up in the log book we set up for down here. I’ve been going from spy hole to spy hole doing the regular rounds and each time there were more of them out there. It looks like the whole damned herd has shown up and now there are a bunch of them pushing on the doors. They don’t seem super serious about breaking the doors but they are pushing on them pretty hard and there’s some creaking noises that have got me a little freaked out.”

  I thought about it. “Ok. Very quietly why don’t you go ahead and pull back about halfway across the store and take up a post close enough to watch what is going on, but far enough away where if you sneeze or knock something over it’s not going to cause them to go all crazy and stampede us.”

  Hank acknowledge he was falling back, I started making my way to the door, stopping to pass along the info that we needed to go completely quiet, turn off all lights, lay down and try not to make any noise. Everyone I spoke to headed back to their bunks and passed along the info on the way so pretty soon it was extremely quiet, except for what sounded like one of the twins was softly crying. Reeves joined me at the door with his weapons and handed me my sword. I had strapped my pistol on already before I had climbed over Ann’s desk and out of the very messy office.

  “Long night?” Reeves asked with a grin. “What’s up?”

  Before he could make a joke about his second statement, “Hank radioed in, looks like the herd is pressing on the front doors. I want to go check it out from a nice safe distance and see if we need to think about getting out the back doors.”

  Reeves did not waste time asking any more questions, he had gone into soldier mode and slowly opened the door to move out on our recon mission. Reeves was moving slowly along the aisles with the flashlight glowing red against the floor to show us the way. A little bit of light on the floor was a lot better than tripping over a stack of cans or anything else that may make a ton of noise. We moved slowly but steadily towards the center of the store until we heard Hank making some kind of spitting noise to get our attention. We angled over to where he was sitting in a chair that was part of a back-porch dining set sort of thing. Standing around him we all stared towards the front of the store where a bit of sunlight peeked in over where the bags were stacked up.

  Once we were standing still I realized that I was seriously hungover. Reeves looked annoyingly healthy and Hank had been one of the ones who had not been able to partake last night cause of Sentry duty so I went ahead and kept my hangover issues to myself. I would just need to hide it and look as carefree as the other two.

  Hank reached down and grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to me. “You look like crap.”

  Reeves agreed, “Yeah, party boy here evidently thanks a bottle or two of Warehouse Wine is a good idea.”

  So much for hiding my discomfort. I settled for ignoring both of them and sipping at the warm water in the bottle Hank had handed me. Once we had quieted down and were just standing there we could all hear the creaking noise that had Hank freaked out. It sounded like a couple hundred people pushing up on the doors to the store. I did not hear any pounding or anything like that so I took that as a good sign. The creaking was still not something that made me happy to hear though.

  “Why are they over here?” I wondered out loud.

  “No clue boss.” Hank said. “They just started showing up as far as I could tell. Just as soon as daylight broke they started showing up out there.”

  I guess it is one of those things that is going to remain a mystery. It did make me even more determined to figure out a way to get up on the roof though. However, for now my instincts were telling me we needed to hunker down and keep quiet for a while. The skill of ‘sitting down and shutting up’ had gotten me through a lot of issues so far during this crisis and I fully intended to have everyone practice doing it until they were all experts at it.

  Heading back towards the main community area Reeves tried to engage me in a whispered conversation, “So, you and Ann huh?”

  “Yep.” I said.

  “Thomas Ok with it?” Reeves asked.

  Crap. I had not even thought about talking to Thomas before I opted to jump into bed with his Aunt. His Aunt whom had recently saved his life as he watched his mother die. Reeves saw he had made his point and silently opened the door and slid back into the community area.

  I walked in and verified everyone was still being silent. Once I was sure everyone understood the need for the silence to continue I made a beeline to the corner where Thomas had gotten himself setup. He was laying on his mattress pretending to sleep as I approached. I sat down on the bed next to him and quietly cleared my throat.

  “What?” He asked, without looking up at me.

  “Hey man, I realize I’ve probably been a bit of a douche to you and I’ve come over here to apologize. Ann and I just sort of hit it off and one thing led to another and now I think we may be together but I know you’re still a huge part of her life. Way more important to her than the guy who just wandered in from nowhere.”

  “You seem like you’re lining up to tell me about the birds and the bees or like if a man and a woman really, really love each other then they bang around like giant monkeys behind a paper-thin door while everyone else outside the door tried to pretend they can’t hear them.”

  “That was just that one time and I’ve apologized to several people about – “I was starting to sweat about it but realized Thomas was cracking a smile. “What are you smiling about?”

  “Dude, it’s an apocalypse. If my aunt and you feel the need to get some then go for it. Just try to find a further away place where I don’t have to know about it. Especially far enough away where I don’t have to hear anything. Also, by ‘that one time’ you are now up to two times counting your little booty call last night. Although mostly the sounds coming out were of someone puking so I’m not sure how great last night was for you anyway.” He stopped and looked at me. Evidently my jaw was basically resting on the floor and I pretty much wanted to be anywhere else right now.

  “We’re cool. All good. No worries. Carry on. If Ann is into you then you must be an alright guy. If you hurt her, I’ll cut your neck while you’re sleeping.” With that cheery sentiment Thomas rolled over and began trying to fall asleep again. He hadn’t really sounded like he was joking with the n
eck cutting stuff though. Feeling relieved that I had received his sort of ‘blessing’ I stood up and began trekking over to Ann’s office to see how she was doing.

  When I opened the door, she looked pissed. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “You left the damn door open when you left earlier.”

  “Ok. Sorry about that. We got some bed news – “

  Ann cut me off. “I was naked on the floor asleep with the door left open!”

  Oh. That explains the pissed off part. She kept going, “I woke up to Barry asking me if I was ok while standing in the doorway checking out my tits!”

  “Well, in his defense you have very nice breasts.”

  “Shut up! What was so damn important you had to leave me laying in this room, that smells a lot like puke, naked for the world to see while you went off to wander about for a few hours before deciding to come check on me?”

  I let her know what was going on and apologized a few more times for leaving the door open and for being an asshole and for not caring about anybody but myself and for being a jerk and for not considering her feelings or blah… blah… blah… At the end of telling her what was going on I did a quick radio check with Hank and confirmed everything was still good. I remembered the conversation with Thomas so went ahead and told her about that as well. Figured I’d just get everything out in the open as long as I was in trouble anyway.

  Ann threw her arms around me and kissed me straight on the lips. “I’m so glad you talked to him. I’ve been worried about how all this may be impacting him and knowing I’ve not spent as much time with him as I should have cause of being in charge and then there was you I got involved with. Oh, that is great news. You really should have lead off with that instead of the how imminent death is knocking on the front door stuff.”

  “First things first. Let’s get you some mouthwash.” I ducked as Ann playfully swung her open hand at my face but I did not move quite fast enough for the knee she brought up into my stomach. “Ooof! What was that for?” I asked while doubled over trying to breathe.

  “Making fun of my breath and your fake ass apology. Now stand up and stop being such a wuss. I still owe you for the leaving me naked on the floor. What are we going to do about the Zombie solicitors?”

  I considered that. “Not sure what we should be trying as far as that goes. My first instinct was to just go quiet and hope the doors didn’t break down before the Zombies got bored of pushing on them and wandered away. But we probably should brainstorm and see if we can come up with something better. Let me grab a few people and we can try to figure it out. Probably in a different room. This one definitely smells like puke.”

  “Ok, but do me a favor and send Barry out on Sentry duty and pull Hank in for the discussion. Try to be subtle about it. I’d rather have Hank there since he knows the store and the plaza better than anybody and he also didn’t stand in a doorway staring at my boobs this morning when you left me laying there naked.”

  Rather than give her another long fake ass apology I went ahead and gave her a quick kiss, threw out a quick “Sorry!” and headed out to round up Reeves and Hank and anyone else who looked like they may have something to contribute.

  I found Reeves on his rack, already asleep, I poked him in the stomach and he rolled over and stared up at me. “Yes?”

  “Wake Ginny up and meet us over in the shower room so we can talk through what’s going on and come up with some plans.” With that said I moved along to where Barry was sleeping. He looked like he was pretending to sleep on hearing me approach as well. I did get a flash of jealousy, followed by a flash of rage and the impulse to kick him in the head but held that in check.

  He sat up as I stood there. “Hey man, not sure what Ann may have said but basically I was going around passing along the message for everyone to be quiet and when I looked in to find Ann she was kind of lying there naked. The room smelled really bad and I was worried about her but I also didn’t want to walk over to her and try to wake her up or anything and while I’m sitting there trying to figure out what to do she wakes up and starts cussing me out. I swear there was nothing more to it than that.”

  I believed him. “No worries man. You may just want to try and avoid her a bit for the next couple of days. Totally my fault anyway for getting distracted and leaving her there like that. Anyway, can you go relieve Hank and send him back to the shower room for a meeting. We need his knowledge of the building and the plaza to try and figure out what to do if we start hearing the glass break. When you relive him just go ahead and send me an “all clear” or whatever the status is about every fifteen minutes. If you hear glass break or anything like that let me know right away. Hanks over by the outdoor dinette things.”

  I headed over to the shower room to wait and see who showed up. Ginny and Reeves were already there and had pulled in some pillows and a few of the recliners we had sitting around on wheels. Ann came in a few minutes later, followed quickly by Hank. I shut the door and looked around the room. By the light of the battery powered lantern everyone looked sufficiently sober and concerned about the situation. I went ahead and kicked off the meeting.

  “I think everyone here knows that having the herd hanging out by our building is bad. Having them hanging out by the front doors and actually pressing on the doors is cause for some serious alarm. I don’t know if maybe they heard something, maybe the party wasn’t such a great idea cause maybe someone got too loud or something. Whatever it is there are now a lot of them outside the front of the building and they don’t look like they’re going anywhere. They seem pretty content to just stay there and try to push our doors in. Ideas? Comments?”

  “A distraction.” We all turned and looked at Hank, “What if we sent someone up on the roof, they go to the other end of the plaza and throw some heavy stuff, bricks or something, at the cars in the lot. If one of them has a car alarm, then the brick hitting it could make the alarm go off then all the Zombies wander down to that end of the lot and leave us alone.”

  Ann spoke up, “Or, we open the door and start to go out and find out there’s a hundred Zombies standing around outside the loading dock door and they claw the door open, rush in, and kill us all. If we do nothing, the Zombies will probably wander off on their own at some point. If we do anything though we’re pretty much inviting them to stay. I’d rather have them wander completely away instead of just moving the bulk of them to the other end of the parking lot.”

  Ginny raised her hand. We all looked over at her, “I think we definitely need to do something. That ‘something’ may very well be doing nothing and hoping the Zombies go away. We all know it has worked for Steve about a million times at this point. For some reason though the Zombies seem to sense that there are people in here. Or, maybe they just know this building has food or can be used for one of their giant Zombie nests or whatever. The distraction idea sounds like a temporary fix unless the person can lead the Zombie’s further away than just the end of the building. I’m thinking if we go that route they head for where we left the Humvee and use that to lead the Zombies as far away as they can them to go then they hump their way back through the woods. If we’re going to sit around doing nothing, then one thing I’ve been thinking we need to do is put together our bugout kits and come up with a bugout plan in case we need to grab our tuff get the hell out super quick.”

  I nodded at Ginny’s comments and I wasn’t the only one taking them seriously. “That’s good thinking Ginny. Gunny would be proud knowing he managed to pass down some of his skills.”

  Ginny started blinking back tears but nodded at me and said thanks. Evidently she had been thinking of the old man while she put together her thoughts. The loss of loved ones was another thing that weighed heavily on everyone. All of the losses were recent in calendar time but seemed like a lifetime ago for those of us trying to survive.

  “Hey Reeves, what says the highly trained and skilled militiaman.”

  Reeves looked over at me, “You do know I was in the reserv
es, right? I was a ground pounder for a couple of years but my MOS when I got out was in Personnel. So basically, I was in HR.”

  We all stared at him. “Those couple years as a ground pounder put you head and shoulders above the rest of us. I doubt anyone here even knows what an ‘MOS’ is used for.”

  “Honestly, you guys do stroke my ego a bit on the military stuff. Not a lot of it is extremely relevant to our current situation. The only thing I can think of is the Evasion training I’ve been through but even that doesn’t mean anything against weird blue still alive Zombies who attack anything that makes noise…” Reeves petered off the tail end of his comments as his brain seemed to kick in. “Why don’t we just wait until it’s dark outside and then roll up the loading dock garage door like an inch and then take a look outside and see if the coast is clear. It’s over at the edge so I doubt there are any zombies standing in a position to be able to grab it and they wouldn’t really be able to get to it anyway.”