I must have been reading too slow as Ann ripped it out of my hands and started reading it. With the rest of us staring at her she started giving us the important parts.
“She says most of them made it here and they’re good. She says she’s so glad we’re reading this right now and to know that she misses and loves us with all her heart. She even drew a little heart. I miss her so much! Anyway, she says they’re holed up at a place like the place where I was living when we all first met.”
“Costco, it is then!” I said excitedly. Getting ready to go hop in the car and find one of the warehouse stores. It made perfect sense that is where they would head. Especially with a ton of mouths to feed. We just needed to figure out which one it was. “Let’s go!” I called over to the group who were all still standing by the sign. They slowly walked back this way. The plan was to stop somewhere and try to find a phone booth so we’d be able to pull up the street addresses for all the warehouse stores around the area. Then we’d just check them out one by one until we found them.
We managed to find a phone book. Which was a miracle in itself in the days of cell phones and the internet. Dredging up our old yellow page skills and using those to find the street address on the map we figure out that Costco was basically in the middle of the city right by some central park looking thing. Great. We searched for another Costco hoping we’d missed the entry or something. Then we sat in the parking lot and talked planning.
“Maybe we should go in on foot, at night, so we don’t attract the Zombies and lead them to the Costco.” Ann said. It was good thinking. Our welcome might not be as warm if we drug a bunch of uninvited house guests along with us.
“Then we’d have to leave all our weapons out here somewhere. I’m not hiking carrying all that stuff again. Plus, the Zombies will hear Steve hyperventilating from miles away.” Reeves was right. Although I didn’t think the hyperventilating part was accurate. I wasn’t that out of shape. You couldn’t be that out of shape and be alive in these times. I was pretty certain I could probably take on a marathon now with no problem. I’d spent the last two years getting in shape by spending most days running for my life.
We finally decided just to drive in and play it by ear. If we ended up with a huge crowd of Zombies following us we’d just go right by the Costco. If everything looked good we’d park a block or two away and hike the last little bit to avoid leading Zombies there. Decision on what we were doing made we all piled back in the truck. We headed up the interstate into Spokane and got off the exit on division street. We’d had to go slow around some cars and move some out of the way to make it here. We’d ended up having to kill a few dozen Zombies and it had gotten loud. We were trailing about twenty of them and talking about whether or not we should just drive by.
As we got closer to the Costco I heard a noise I had not heard since Vegas. There was a dull roar in the air that got louder the closer we got to the Costco.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about bringing Zombies to the door.” Reeves said. Looking down from division street towards the Costco. The parking lots and most of the surrounding street were packed with Zombies trying to get into the warehouse store. It was like every insane asylum in the country had bussed their craziest guests over here for an early start to Black Friday. We drove right past the place and kept on going. We were going to need to come up with a new plan.
Entry 36: Siege Busters
It was still raining which meant Reeves and I were soaked. I really wasn’t sure how Wilson ended up driving every time. It made sense for Walker to get in the front of the truck. He was busy trying to grow some skin over his nubs. Ann was a woman. She was all about being a strong independent woman but she’d fall back on being old fashioned as soon as it meant she wasn’t having to sit in the back of the truck. Wilson just had this Jedi mind trick thing he did where he said he was driving and Reeves and I just jumped in the back like well trained dogs.
To be fair, he was a better driver than the rest of us. He was trained in offensive and defensive driving techniques. Sitting in the back of a rusty old pickup piled high with explosives and guns in the rain while driving through an apocalypse really sucks though. I think he was milking the whole training thing quite a bit. Reeves and I were reduced to yelling through the little slider panel. Ann wouldn’t let us open it too much because she didn’t want the seat to get wet. I’m sure we’d all hate for the seat to get wet.
“Whatever we’re going to do we probably don’t have a ton of time to figure it out.” I said, speaking in a high volume to make sure they could hear me. “Once the Zombies start trying to get inside they eventually get inside. Same thing happened to us at another store and once the Zombies tried to get inside they were able to do it.”
“Ginny would have learned from that and have the back portion of the warehouse blocked off to keep the Zombies out. I don’t see how you’d stop them from coming in the front though.” We all knew if there was one of us who could come up with a solid plan and learn from experience it was Ginny. Ann kept talking. “Assuming she can get the back portion sealed off she could hold out indefinitely. They’d have plenty of food and water and whatever else they needed stockpiled in there. We don’t know how long she had to plan and get situated in there though. We don’t know how many of them are able to help and fight or anything else for that matter. We need to move quick. I’m not up for chancing it by taking our time.”
Reeves was digging through our stuff. “We’ve got eleven rockets. We didn’t bring the mortars but we could make some decent noise these rockets. Maybe blow up a gas station or something? Then drive by the Zombies beeping our horn and get them to chase us down the interstate?”
That plan sounded like something we’d typically throw together. If we had the mortars I would have already started launching them to get the Zombies to move away from the Costco. Since we did not have the mortars we’d have to improvise. The RPG was definitely going to play a part in it. Wilson didn’t think so though.
“I’d rather came up with something else to use as a distraction. We’re not getting any more rockets anytime soon and we may need those to fight the Koreans or survivors or who knows what. Instead of shooting the rockets around what if we just find some gas stations and see if we can’t blow them up? You happen to have a couple guys in the car whose job description is to blow shit up.”
“Ok. Let’s find something and make it happen.” I was good with going with what Wilson was saying and conserving the rockets if we could find other ways to distract the Zombies long enough for us to bust in and rescue Ginny and crew. I just didn’t see how he was going to come up with something to make a lot of noise any faster than I could stick an RPG out the side of the truck and aim at a building and pull the trigger. Saving rockets wasn’t even in the same realm of importance to me as saving Ginny. Wilson had about five seconds to figure something out or I was going to just start making some noise.
“Screw it. I got nothing. Let’s shoot some rockets.” Wilson gave up on trying to brainstorm a way to make noise. It was probably harder to brainstorm when you knew you had a pickup full of freakin’ RPGs. Either way, I was down to make some noise. We just needed to figure out how to walk the Zombies away from the Costco. If we could get them away for long enough Ginny would figure out a way out or maybe we could get them to stay away for a while and we could just circle around and drop in to say hi. Either way, we needed to do something before the Zombies found the chink in the armor and got in the store. Assuming they hadn’t already.
With no real plan Wilson hit the brakes and got us turned around. Reeves and I got up in the truck bed and started plinking away at Zombies with a couple of AK-47s. We weren’t concerned about noise as the whole point of this mission now was to make enough noise to attract a large crowd of Zombies to follow us. We’d had experience with Zombie herding and using them as missiles to throw at targets so I was pretty sure this should work. I hated betting everyone’s lives on ‘pretty sure this would work’
but didn’t see much alternative. Walker was trying the radio over and over again on the chance that they had their ears on and we were we able to get a signal over the distance and into the warehouse. Not likely but worth a shot.
I half-listened in between taking shots at the Zombies starting to stream towards us. Most of them were remnants of our ‘Zombie Wake’ we’d created by driving this way in the first place. Not as many as normal, as a lot of them had been sidetracked by the noise of the Zombies screaming their heads off around the Costco. We got closer to the turn off leading to the Costco and the Zombies began to get thicker. We turned the corner and the mob became visible.
Except for the few streaming at us from all directions they had their backs to us as they all stood around yelling at the building. Wilson screeched to a halt, slamming me and Reeves up against the back of the truck. I heard a car door open and shut and then Ann and Walker were hopping in the back with us. That made sense as they were more useful in the back than they were sitting in the front. Back here they could at least shoot.
I picked up the RPG as Walker and Reeves manhandled the fifty-caliber machine gun onto the roof of the pickup and fed in ammo. Ann took over shooting the Zombies that were getting danger close to us. I checked to make sure Reeves and Walker were good to go and I let a rocket fly right into the middle of the crowded concourse. A loud explosion followed by a shower of Zombie parts followed. I turned around and started fumbling for another rocket as Wilson started getting the truck turned around. I grabbed the next RPG and stood up as Reeves opened up on the Zombies with the big machine gun.
He didn’t have to do much in the way of aiming. The rocket had done the job of getting their attention. A wall of Zombie flesh cascaded towards us. They were preceded by a cacophony of screams so perceptible that it seemed they were preceded by a visible wall of noise. Raw hatred rolled off them as they rushed towards us. Reeves was mowing them down like wheat but it didn’t do any major damage to the horde. We didn’t have enough ammo to get anywhere near taking out this mass of man eaters. I lined up the next rocket and let it fly. It hit and an opening sprung up where the rocket exploded.
It must have killed thirty of them at least but the bodies themselves shielded the rest of them from being harmed. The noise and explosive force may have busted ear drums and ruptured eyeballs but that wasn’t going to cause your average Zombie to lose one iota of blood lust. I felt like Wilson was taking a really long time to get us turned around. The main line of the advancing Zombies was only about twenty yards from us at this point. Reeves had dropped the fifty into the truck bed with the barrel smoking. He’d emptied out everything he had on the approaching horde. He came over and started helping me get the next RPG setup and ready to launch.
Walker had his pistol in his good hand and he quickly emptied a clip into the oncoming Zombies. It did basically nothing. We had their attention now. We just needed to keep it and make sure they followed us out of here. We also needed to not die. Not dying was very high on the priority list. Wilson finally got us turned around and moving back the way we had come. Ann was squatting in the back of the truck with her AR propped against the tail gate as she shot the leaders out of the Zombies behind us. First place prize in that Zombie marathon was a bullet to the skull.
Reeves propped himself up the front of the pickup and worked on killing anything that might get in our way and slow us down. We were going faster than the Zombies behind us but still pretty slow so any Zombies in front of us would have been able to jump on the hood or maybe even get in the truck bed. Reeves job was to prevent that from happening. Walker was helping Ann keep the leaders running at us from actually catching us.
Everyone was doing their jobs which meant I needed to be doing mine. My job was to make lots of noise and kill mass quantities of Zombies. I loved my job. I shot another rocket over Ann’s head into the Zombies following us. This one not only made a bunch of noise and killed a bunch of Zombies it also sparked a car fire so that was a bonus. I had found a small box of flash bangs and fragmentation grenades when I was rooting around looking for all the rockets so I started tossing those out as well. I felt we were doing pretty well on the get the Zombies to follow us plan. Walker yelled something and pointed to the side roads. They were flooded with Zombies racing towards us. Which was great and everything except it looked like they might be racing fast enough to cut us off. That was something we did not want to happen.
I banged on the window and pointed at the Zombies coming at us from the front and side. Wilson nodded he understood and yelled something that cheered me up greatly.
“Got it! I’ll get around them. You see if you can put a rocket in the leaders before they get too close. I’m talking to Ginny right now on the radio too. She’s up on the roof!”
I was pretty close to deaf after all the rockets and grenades and screaming Zombies but I made out enough of what he was saying to be stoked. This plan might actually work! I’d had some fears we’d blow though all our ammo to rescue an empty building. That would’ve sucked. I loaded up another rocket and tried to steady my aim to take out the leaders from the group coming at us from the side. I completely missed them but blew up a truck near them which caught on fire as the diesel spilled out of it so that slowed them down anyway.
“Nice shot!” Walker clapped me on the back. Grinning as he watched the UPS truck bonfire I’d just created. I chose to go with the flow and let him believe I’d done it on purpose. Wilson spun us past the groups converging on the highway we were on and we kept moving. We were out of grenades and running low on conventional ammo. I had three grenades left and I kind of wanted to hold onto those. Wilson was right about having an RPG being really useful. We seemed to have their attention pretty good now as we kept trucking.
I popped a squat by Ann and let her know Wilson had made contact with Ginny. They had vehicles and weapons and were going to bust out now that most of the Zombies had left and meet us at a crossroads north of the city. Ann squealed and gave me a hug then settled back into her post. Reeves came over and asked what was up and then tried to emulate squealing like Ann and giving me a hug but I dodged fast enough to avoid all that. Walker was grinning at us, amused by Reeves antics. I sat down next to Walker.
“Nice job man. We made it out.” I held out my left hand for him to shake. He started to reach out and shake it then realized I was screwing with him and settled for flipping me off with his right hand instead. I decided to double down on my wit.
“Sorry man. Anyway, want to pass the time with a friendly thumb wrestling match?” I held out my left hand again and laughed when he aimed his pistol at me. He kept it aimed at me and didn’t crack a smile so I decided to get up and go sit back down by Ann again.
“You know. I thought you were kind of a jerk when I first met you.”
I waited but she didn’t say anything else. Everybody’s a comedian. The Zombies continued to follow us but Wilson put some distance between us so that a flat tire wouldn’t necessarily spell our deaths. As we emerged out of the city proper and back into the woods again we all started looking for the turnoff Ginny had told Wilson to look for. We found it and turned off it and went up to the crossroads and waited. We were a good quarter mile off the main highway and had been out of sight of the lead Zombies when we turned off so we were reasonably sure they’d pass right by us and keep moving on up the highway.
Wilson was standing on the cab with his binoculars verifying our assumptions were true. We all heard distant moaning and screaming about fifteen minutes later and Wilson motioned that the Zombies were moving past us on the main highway. We expected a few to come up the side street so we waited for them in the woods with bats and machetes. They showed up and we killed them as quietly as we could. I had gotten pretty good at taking lives quickly. There was a moment though, after you killed a Zombie, when the monster faded out of them and you were left with your knife plunged into a person. Just a regular person with some funny shaded skin. When the hate bled out of them and the
y lay at your feet in a puddle of their own blood and piss they looked like they could have been saved. They looked like you had made a mistake by killing them. It weighed heavy on me.
It weighed heavy on all of us. I figured that was one of the reason Ann kept us full of all kinds of pills. She had cured my nightmares with a sleeping pill I took if we were somewhere safe. If I had nightmares on those pills I never remembered them. She kept the pills away from Reeves as he was self-medicating with whatever liquor he could find. Luckily, he was a highly functional alcoholic. You couldn’t even really ever tell if he was drunk or sober. Ann thought that was mostly because he was always drunk. One of these days we’d have to deal with all this baggage.
Not today though. Today we’d do whatever it took to reunite with Ginny and then get the gang moving on what would hopefully be our final mission. The one to find a place to live out our lives in peace. To start over and work on building up a new civilization.
Entry 37: Reunited and it Feels So Good
The Final Countdown Page 21