Zournal (Book 5): Feeling Lucky?

by R. S. Merritt

  Marg came in for another hug. He was crying so the hug took a little bit longer to break up while he tried to get control of himself. Could this get any more awkward? I was about ready to leave and go look for Reeves and Ginny on my own just so this guy would stop blubbering all over me. He finally gained his composure back and went and sat at one of the cubes on a different aisle.

  The sun had gone down for the second day. Ann and I were talking about trying to maybe go out and search for them. We knew the basic direction they had left in so we’d just need to try and follow in their footsteps. Hopefully, avoiding whatever had caused them not to make it back. A noise down at the end of the building had us all armed and dangerous. We recognized the sound of the door opening and closing.

  A minute later we heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey boss! Don’t shoot! It’s Ginny and me and we brought some new friends home to torture and shit.”

  Sure enough, coming down the aisles was Ginny and Reeves pushing along two Koreans with their hands tied behind their backs.

  Entry 29: Improvise, Overcome, Adapt

  Ginny and Reeves had been pretty productive on their night out. After leaving us to go find a place to observe and gather intel they had passed through the golf course separating us from the Mandalay Bay Resort. They’d seen piles of Zombies sleeping on top of one another in and around the trees and small buildings scattered along the course. Showing way more fortitude than I would have had, they’d slunk through the course and out the other side of it. Wandering through the darkness, surrounded by sleeping monsters, heading deeper into the lion’s den.

  They moved forward until they passed out of the golf course and were halfway through an open lot across from the resort. They had to stop and turn around because the press of sleeping and wandering Zombies got so thick they couldn’t move forward anymore. They shuffled their way out of the lot and moved towards the airport. Moving quietly through the darkness they saw a big building looming up ahead. There had been Zombies sleeping around the entrance and they assumed the inside was packed with them but went in anyway.

  The inside of the building was filled with sleeping Zombies. Being very careful not to wake any of them up they moved towards the emergency stairwell. Ignoring the sign that warned about an alarm sounding if they opened the door they moved into the stairwell. They made it up the stairs but couldn’t get out on the roof since the roof access door was locked. The door itself was too substantial to just kick it down. Reeves got to work with his tool kit and about an hour later they were through the door. Reeves tried to put the door back up behind them since he had removed it by the hinges. They couldn’t figure out how to get the door back up so they moved out onto the roof to spend the day with big, open doorway behind them.

  They waited there until the sun came up. Once the sun came up the Zombies started waking up and surging towards the casino. Reeves and Ginny kept a look out on the doorway but no Zombies felt the need to venture up to the roof. They spent the day there. The only thing they really noted was that there was a ton of very loud Zombies trying to get into the casino. After watching for a couple of hours and catching some random glimpses of Korean activity but nothing super useful on the casino side they had gone to the other side of the roof to check out the airport.

  Two planes took off while they were watching. One was a smaller puddle jumper type while the other one was a huge jumbo jet with the UPS logo on the side of it. They expected the noise to attract the Zombies but whenever a plane took off loud noises echoed out from the casinos and the Zombies renewed their attacks on the casinos instead of wandering over to see what was going on at the airports. The Koreans had worked out a pretty good system to allow for a functioning airport next to a horde of Zombies.

  Ginny noticed the fence around the airport was in really good shape considering what most fences looked like by now. The Koreans must be maintaining and reinforcing that whenever they got the chance. They saw a group of five Koreans came out of a hangar and walk the perimeter of the fence checking for any issues. Reeves had glanced at his watch when they came out and noted they’d come out right at ten. He kept watching and they came out again at noon. Then at two in the afternoon. Every two hours they’d come out and inspect their piece of fence before going back into the hangar. Reeves and Ginny had a whispered strategy session and decided that predictability would be a useful tidbit to try and take some prisoners.

  They had known they would not make it back in time but figured this was what they had been sent out to do. If they’d just come back then we’d have wasted an entire night doing the same thing they went ahead and did. Once dusk started settling in they went ahead and headed down the stairs. They crossed the street and cut their way through the perimeter fence after watching the guards go past it. Once in, they headed for the building the patrol stayed in. They waited for the patrol to leave again and then Reeves walked up and opened the door with Ginny behind him.

  Inside, they found a large open space with a corner being used for a sleeping area. Cots filled it up and it looked like about seven of the cots were currently occupied by sleeping soldiers. A couple of offices were through doors on the other side of the large open space. Walking over to the cots, they tried to come up with a way to determine who may speak English so they’d know who were the best ones to keep alive and take prisoner. Reeves was wondering why the Koreans didn’t have a guard walking around the space right now since the front door was wide open. He considered that pretty sloppy.

  A door opened about twenty feet to the right and a Korean emerged out of it. He had a flashlight pointed at the ground with a red filter covering the beam. He must be the guard and must have been busy taking a dump or whatever in the bathroom. He was focused on the floor in front of him as he walked towards the area with the cots. Reeves started walking towards him casually with his knife hidden in his hand. The guard looked up at the approaching figure and stopped to stare as he tried to figure out who this guy was approaching him. His hand never went for a weapon as he anticipated it being a soldier from another unit or something along those lines. He smiled and moved towards Reeves who gutted him and left his body to bleed out on the ground.

  Checking his watch Reeves and Ginny moved towards the cots. They came up with a scientific pattern of poking the sleeper and waiting for him to sit up. Ginny would say something along the lines of, “Hey, do you speak English?”

  The first four guys just continued to look around after her question, obviously very confused and not comprehending what she had just said. Ginny raised her finger and Reeves brought down the heavy ax he had found on the wall into the skulls of the bewildered soldiers. The fifth guy said he spoke it a little. They taped him up and left him on the ground while they went around and killed the others. Leaving the one guy on the ground they headed for the offices. Once they got there they cleared each one until they found an officer asleep in one of them. A large bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the counter.

  Reeves stood over the guy with his ax held up in the air. Ginny poked him in the face a few times. He finally sat up and Ginny knocked him back down and asked if he spoke English. He just stared at her. Reeves was about to smash in the guy’s face when Ginny told him to wait. Her theory being he’s an officer so he may know more than the guy we captured who can speak English. They figured we could use the one guy as a translator and hopefully the officer may actually know something useful.

  Reeves checked his watch. The patrol was due back any minute now. They needed to figure out a quiet way to take them out. Him and Ginny had a quick conversation around it and decided there really wasn’t a quiet way for them to be sure of winning in a fight against five awake and alert soldiers. Reeves started running around the hangar until he had found a couple of cans of fuel. Him and Ginny poured fuel all over the living quarters and picked up the hostages they had taken. They pushed the two guys out the door while Reeves tossed a match on the fuel soaked cots.

  They shoved the prisoners ahea
d of them and towards the fence. Behind them they heard shouts as the patrol got back and saw the fire burning through the hangar. Reeves cut through the fence and they slipped out with the prisoners. They moved quick as the flames were starting to get loud enough to attract some Zombies over to the area. Hopefully, the Zombies being attracted would be able to throw some more confusion into the scene. That way it may be ruled an accident versus the Koreans sending out people to search for the arsonists.

  Entry 30: The Geneva What?

  The two prisoners were sitting down on the ground in front of Reeves and Ginny. The one Ginny indicated spoke English had been staring at us as we spoke. He had seemingly followed the entire conversation. The young officer did not look like he had the slightest idea what was going on. He also looked like he was pretty drunk still. He kept swaying to some inaudible music as he sat on the ground.

  I wasn’t worried about revealing our plans around them since I didn’t expect either of them to leave the room alive. Of course, the looser we were with our talk the more likely they were to realize we didn’t think they’d ever leave this room alive either. We needed to know where they were keeping the women prisoners. We needed information in order for us to figure out our next steps. We needed to pry it loose from these guys heads.

  I addressed the prisoner we thought spoke English.

  “Hey. I’m Steve. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Chiho. I’ll tell you whatever you need. Just don’t kill me.”

  “That sounds like a great way to do business Chiho. If you can give us the information we need then we’ll tie you up and leave you here but you should be able to get out in a day or so and escape. If you don’t want to tell us what we need to know we’ll have to get more creative. Do you understand?”

  Chiho confirmed he understood. Once he had calmed down I started asking him questions. He was training for the translator rating but as of now was just a grunt. The officer he was with was just a grunt officer but should maybe know a little more about what was going on since he got higher level briefings. Chiho had been in the US about a year. Before that he had been on-board an aircraft carrier and living on a tropical island. He’d been in Las Vegas for about three months now and been assigned to the airport garrison the entire time. He did not know where prisoners were kept. He did not know where the women would have been taken. He didn’t have any real useful knowledge for us.

  “Well Chiho.” I said after he’d told us about everything he knew. “You need to get your officer buddy to tell us where we could find any women who were captured. Also, any children who were captured. Where would they be taken?”

  I waited while Chiho talked to the drunk officer. The officer started yelling and struck Chiho across the cheek with his open hand. Reeves stepped in and kicked the officer in the face hard enough to break some teeth and send the guy flying onto his back. I looked inquisitively at Chiho.

  “Your buddy’s not quite as friendly and loose with information as you? What do we need to do to get him to talk?”

  Chiho just stared at me. Tears were filling his eyes. He finally whispered.

  “Lieutenant Minjun says I am an idiot and that you are just going to kill us both anyway. He tells me to stop talking so I do not die a traitor.”

  I considered my next words. It did suck to be Chiho right about now.

  “Your Lieutenant does have a few things right. It would make sense for us to kill both of you. If you’re helpful though, I don’t see a reason to mess my karma up by killing you. We probably will kill the Lieutenant though. You’ve already fed us enough info to qualify yourself as a traitor so no real reason for you to stress over that right now. No one is going to know what you told us anyway. Now, let the Lieutenant know I’m cutting off one of his body parts every minute until he tells us where they take the women and what they are doing with them.”

  Chiho stared at me with the tears continuing to well up.

  “Tell him.” I repeated while pulling out the bolt cutters we used to get through the chain-link fences.

  Chiho spoke to Minjun who spit on Chiho and then gave us a resolute stare to show he wasn’t going to talk. Two fingers and part of his ear later he told us everything he knew. It wasn’t much but one of the officer privileges was a monthly visit with one of the captured women. They went and picked out the one they wanted at the Luxor. There was a floor for pregnant women and children that was separate as well. Many of the women had to be ‘broken’ according to Minjun.

  That was all the info we needed. I nodded over at Marg. He’d been losing his shit since Minjun had mentioned breaking the women with too much spirit. Marg embedded his hatchet in Minjun’s skull. Then he put his foot on the guys neck and worked it out while staring at Chiho. I felt kind of bad for Chiho. He probably should have ditched the uniform of the rapist invader who liked to crush the rest of the world.

  Chiho started scrambling backwards saying he’d told us everything he knew and he was ready to be tied up now. Marg got the hatchet out and turned towards Chiho. Chiho saw the look in Marg’s eyes and it was like a puppet when the puppet master drops all the strings at once. The energy just went out of his body and he crumpled to the ground and stared listlessly at Marg while urine soaked the crotch of his pants. Marg moved forward and finished off Chiho. We all averted our eyes at the final moment.

  We drug the bodies into the cubicles and shoved them under some desks. It struck me for the umpteenth time how insane our lives had become.

  Entry 31: Ready, Fire, Aim…

  Marg had disappeared at some point while the rest of us shoved the bodies out of the way. I stood up and looked around for him. Not seeing him anywhere we all headed back for the break room that had become the de facto base of operations for us here. Ginny walked into the break room ahead of me and I marveled at how a young woman like her had lived through this mess. Not just lived, she had thrived and won all of our respect. Still, she was a teenage girl and we’d just killed two prisoners right in front of her with a hatchet. True, she’d killed a bunch of other ones earlier with Reeves as well but that had been as part of an operation. These had been guys we had taped up and laying on the floor who couldn’t defend themselves.

  It was a hard-new world we lived in. Our group was harder than hell now. Even the damned Golden Doodle had chalked up a couple of assists. What kind of world is it where a Doodle is considered a man killer? We all sat around the break table. Ann had broken out a roll of paper towels she found somewhere and a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer. We all took advantage of that. Sitting around and not saying anything for about twenty minutes. Letting the most recent murders settle into our souls.

  Marg walked in and got us talking. He was looking pissed. He walked in with war paint on and stood at the end of the table.

  “Thank you all for coming here. Thank you all for your warrior sprits and your patience. Thanks to you I know where my wife and daughter may be held. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m figuring out a way to get there and I’m going. I don’t expect you to – “

  “Shut up.” I stood up and gave Marg a hug. Ann, Reeves, Catori, and Ginny followed suit. Even Daisy jumped up on him and gave him a big dog hug. The dog made him laugh a little bit through the tears that were flowing freely and unashamedly. Not all of the tears were his.

  “We’re all going to go in and help you rescue your wife and daughter. We’re going to find Catori’s sister too. No one is wandering off to try this by themselves. So, sit down and let’s figure out how we get into that pyramid. We probably need to get out of here pretty soon anyway considering all the dead Koreans Reeves and Ginny left over at the airport. Someone is probably going to notice that at some point and try to figure out who did it and where they went.”

  Everyone sat down around the table and we broke out some pens and found some whiteboard markers for the board. This was turning into some sort of corporate brainstorming session. I felt like I was finally getting some use out of those business classes I’d bought
the books for. I never read the books and barely went to class but if you pay for the credits you get the knowledge, right?

  We all talked about what we had seen so far and listed Zombies and Koreans up on the board as the main threats. We decided whatever we did it would have to be at night. The Zombies were still active at night because there were so many of them in that area. At night, they were at least a little bit less active. A lot of them wandered off to nest and sleep during the night as well. Going in on foot wasn’t going to work. We talked hang-gliding, parachuting, zip lining and helicopters and ruled out each of those methods for different reasons. Reasons like not having hang gliders, parachutes, zip lines or a helicopter sitting around we could use.