Zournal (Book 4): Reap What You Sow

by Merritt, R. S.

  To my right was just more wall and windows. At the very far corner on the left was a fire escape looking ladder deal. There was the large pile of dead and broken Zombies under the shattered windows. There were also a lot of Zombies wandering around the parking lot. Many with an arm or a leg flopping around uselessly as they aimlessly plodded around in circles until finally stopping and just standing around. I couldn’t see the fire escape thing very well from where we were at. It was at the far end of the wall of the huge building we were in, so probably a good eighty yards away and the sun was directly behind it.

  We needed to try and bleed out the Zombies standing around on the first floor of the warehouse before nightfall. If we could get rid of the majority of them and get the ones who had been around the Hummer to leave, then we had a chance of sneaking our way through to the Hummer tonight. The longer we sat in this office the more likely a Zombie would eventually show some interest in what may be behind the door in the room they were standing around in. Daisy was also a huge risk as a single bark would bring down the whole horde on top of us.

  Reeves had gone over to the corner of the room opposite the exterior office and been busy working a hole into the drywall with his knife. He finally had a hole he could see through to the downstairs. He motioned me over and I went to check it out. It was like hovering a drone over a Metallica concert. The whole building below seemed to be packed wall to wall with Zombies. They were jammed in like sardines.

  I toyed with the idea of just dropping the C-4 straight below but while it would be pretty effective in taking out a big chunk of them it would just end up with more Zombies trying to force their way in. We were back to needing to figure out how to get one of us on the ground to set the C-4 to blow open a wall down there and let the Zombies out. Reeves finally wrote out his plan on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

  ‘I’m going to shove the C-4 in my pocket with the detonator set to go off in one hour. Then I’m going to jump for it. I’ve been trained on jumping from high spaces when I went to parachuting school in the Army. I have the best chance of any of us. I’ll set the charge, get over to the ladder and climb right up. I’ll see you guys back at the Hummer if I can’t figure out how to get over here up in the ceiling.’

  What he wasn’t saying was that he was setting the detonator ahead of time in case he didn’t survive the fall or got ripped apart by the Zombies afterwards. I didn’t see much hope for that scenario if he jumped in the daylight. The Zombies wandering around would see him and attack. If we did it at night it would wake up the ones inside but then we could just wait for the majority of them to leave then the rest would hopefully fall back asleep. After much pushing the piece of paper around the group several times we finally reached a consensus that this was probably the best plan we were going to come up with.

  We all made ourselves as comfortable as possible to wait for night time to get here. Finding ourselves once again in the military paradox of hurry up and wait.

  Entry 43: Leap of Faith

  Darkness fell on us quickly. One minute we were all sitting around quietly contemplating what Reeves was fixing to do and the next second it was time for him to do it. I racked my brain to come up with another way. Reeves walked over to the window and looked down for the hundredth time. He’d memorized where he was going to try and land. It was actually off to the side of the bodies that had run over from the mound underneath the windows in the room next to us. It would be a harder landing but more stable footing when he hit. We all wished him luck as he stuck in the detonator and buried it in his jacket with a t-shirt wrapped around it to keep it from jarring around too much when he landed.

  He was psyching himself up and trying to get his bearings around him. I walked over and told him to just remember his training.

  “They did have parachute training in the Army. I just avoided it because I’m kind of afraid of heights. See you on the other side man.”

  With those, less than confidence inducing last words, Reeves went ahead and leaped. There was no way for us to tell if he made it or not just by watching him since it was a dark, moonless, cloudy night. We’d worked out a system though. He had a little laser pointer he was going to flash once when he landed and all was good. He’d do it twice once he had the C-4 wedged onto the wall. Then, the third time would be from the ladder on the other side of the building to let us know he was safe and making his way back to the Hummer as well.

  I think we were all holding our breaths as about thirty seconds later a red light flashed us from below. There was an audible exhale from all of us. We waited. Staring along the wall towards the spot we’d decided would probably be ideal for the C-4 to go off on. We’d looked for someplace where there was some opening already and seen what looked like an emergency door about thirty yards away from us. That was far enough away that we weren’t overly concerned about our part of the building collapsing. We’d also wanted it far enough away from the ladder that it didn’t ruin Reeves chances of escape.

  About ten minutes later we got the two flashes of red we had all been waiting for. He needed to hurry. I’m thinking he did not want to be hanging onto a ladder on the outside of the building when the giant wad of C-4 detonated. Unless he felt like going for another flight through the nighttime sky into the hard asphalt of the parking lot. With five minutes to spare we saw the red-light flash again from a level equal with us on the other side of the building. We’d discussed how he was going to be able to get in and he had said he hoped to figure it out once he was over there.

  In the event we made it to the Hummer and he wasn’t there yet we were going to give him a few minutes then take off. We’d get out of this town and then stop at the second gas station on the left side of the road and wait for him there. We hadn’t really discussed how long we’d wait as that had been deemed too depressing to consider. After that final flash of light from him there was nothing for it but to wait that last five minutes and hope we didn’t get blown up.

  We were hoping that a bunch of Zombies got incinerated and the rest ran out of the warehouse to see what was up. This wasn’t a plan with quite the complexity of the beach landing at Normandy but I felt like with the resources we had at our disposal this was the best we could do. Hopefully, it would prove to be enough. The earth exploded.

  We were all jostled around as the wall around us seemed to flex. A few bricks went flying off the outside and just the wood frame was left. I heard a car alarm going off across the parking lot and gave Ann a look to say that I had told her so. Very juvenile but very much my style. Everything was according to plan so far. That was scary.

  We waited for ten minutes which is how long we thought it would take for most of the Zombies to get out if they were getting out. The car alarm going off on the other side of the parking lot was the cake topper. I’d kind of thought we’d have to wait a long time for them to settle back down but I was betting most of them were already outside trying to attack the car. I had a little flashlight with the red cover on it to use at night. I slowly opened the office door.

  Good thing I had the light because about half the office was missing. The explosion must have been more powerful than we thought. Or, the factory builders in Colorado sucked. One way or the other. They probably got union wages though. We were going to need to carefully walk across beams and broken floor joists that were all covered in fallen ceiling tiles and various other crap. To make it more fun, it was my turn to carry the dog.

  We had finally given up on holding her mouth shut and had made a muzzle with shoe laces for her. We’d tried tape but were worried she was asphyxiating once we got it on her. The shoe string muzzle we had MacGyvered seemed to be holding up pretty good and kept her from doing much more than making a whiny noise. She was not a light dog though and carrying her like a big baby while trying to navigate the destroyed room outside was going to be interesting. Ann waved me over to the hole Reeves had made earlier to check on the Zombies.

  I couldn’t see anything now because it was d
ark. I didn’t really want to shine a light down there in case it server to get their attention. Finally, I didn’t see a way around it if we wanted to check so I shined the light down. There was no sign of the pressed together mob of maniacs that had been pressed so tightly together down there before. Excellent, that meant we now had a decent chance of making it to the Hummer without being eaten. I picked up Daisy and we ventured into the next room.

  Once we had made it through the exterior office without any of us falling through the floor or otherwise incapacitating ourselves we stood on the catwalk and looked around. I risked the light again and the warehouse was empty. We made our way in the darkness over to the ladder. In hindsight, if we had been able to find a way to break this ladder and toss it down before we’d be pretty screwed right now. Ginny went down first. Ann handed me Daisy once I was on the ladder and I carried her down with her trying to lick my face with a shoe string tied around her big muzzle. It was awkward but we were soon all standing around on the ground. The bodies that had fallen off the ladder had been redistributed by the crowd of Zombies. They had either eaten the cadavers or the mass of them coming through had served to bulldoze the mess out of there.

  Behind us, we could hear the car alarm and the random screams of Zombies outside. The journey to the Hummer was pretty anticlimactic. All of the Zombies who had been outside must have pressed their way under the gate to go stand inside the warehouse. We moved rapidly across the floor, careful not to trip in whatever nastiness there was on the floor. None of us wanted to go underneath the gate through the gap we had come in by since it was covered with all kind of Zombie goop.

  I opened one of the emergency doors instead. I moved it slowly and it popped right open. I looked out through the crack and did not see anything scary so opened it a bit more and went ahead and squeezed out with Daisy on a rope by my side. She wasn’t trying to whine or bark which I took as a very good sign. As we got closer to the Hummer I saw a shape standing by the end of it. I pulled out my pistol and moved in closer. Once I was close enough I cleared my throat and got ready to pull the trigger.

  “Hey boss, it’s me.” Reeves looked back at me and then went back to dumping more diesel into the thirsty Hummer.

  Entry 44: Viva Las Vegas

  We made it out of the town pretty easy after that. I blamed the whole episode on myself. We were starting to get sloppy and as we had just found out, sloppiness could easily kill in this new world. As we drove we talked about ways we could be safer when moving through towns. It came back to still doing it during the day so we could see but driving wicked fast to be through the town before the Zombies could get all stirred up.

  Reeves discovery that we could have all just hopped down and walked around the building to get back in the Hummer humbled us all as well. There had been no way to know that through so no use crying over spilled milk on that one. The next step was to figure out what we were doing now. It was still winter. We were still cold. We still needed a place to gather up some more ammo and get ready to take the war to the invaders.

  I was staring at our map when I remembered something I had said to Ann a while back.

  “Hey Ann. Looks like you’re getting that dream date after all. We’re headed for Las Vegas baby!”

  Authors Afterword

  We’ve made it through four of these now. Pretty cool, I’m looking forward to hitting Vegas with Steve and crew. Even if the only show in town is the “Blue Man Group!”

  Thank you very much for reading this and living the story with me. If you enjoyed the book PLEASE leave a favorable comment. I know Amazon makes it kind of a pain to leave a comment but I will absolutely appreciate it!