The Diary of Jill Woodbine: A Novel of Love, Lies, and the Zombie Apocalypse

by Jay Smith

  The blood collecting between its fingers mixed with sweat and gave me room to twist and pull my foot around in the creature’s grip. The glass dug deep and ripped up my skin, but I kept pulling away, even as a second hand tried to grab onto my shoe. I felt slick, greasy hair brushing against my leg and pictured gnashing teeth closing in on my flesh. Between the pain, the terror and the adrenaline I found the strength to pull myself back up into the hatch and plant my free foot against the side of the hatch. The soldier behind me had his arms locked around my chest, but he didn’t have the leverage against the pull of the eaters to get me out. I looked down into the darkness and – I don’t know if I reached out with The Force or if it was dumb luck but I dropped my free leg, kicked like a mule and connected with something HARD just at ankle level. I felt it snap and the grip on my ankle was gone.

  Strong arms carried me backwards and out onto the roof of the bus. A soldier stepped up to the portal as bloated gray hands rose from the hatch. He pointed his weapon into the hole and sprayed it with an entire clip of ammunition. He waved the barrel in a circular motion inside the hatch and a fine, red mist rose up from inside, swirling into tight coils and plumes along with the smoke rising from his rifle. Spent casings shot out over the side of the bus, pelting the eaters below. The screaming in the bus died away pretty quick at that point. The only human sound I could make out inside the bus when the soldier was finished was the weak, fading cry of a child.

  My world went white for a moment. I didn’t really pass out because I was aware – sorta – of things going on around me, but I fell into an odd parallel world where everything was in a peaceful state. Suddenly nothing was wrong. There were voices yelling to one another, presumably about me, but there was no urgency or fear in their tone. Every so often, a hot cartridge would bounce off the roof near me and over my body or face. In the numbness of my senses, it sounded like wind chimes and the rifles firing together was like a riding mower running in the distance. The world was dark, but I remember experiencing bright sunshine warming my body. The bus rocked beneath me and the air smelled of salt and sulfur. It smelled… it smelled like the ocean on the Fourth of July and I felt myself rolling with the ocean on some raft just off shore.

  I was brought back to reality by a burning shark biting down on my leg. I woke coughing up blood caught in my throat. The day faded to a smoky star field spinning slowly counter-clockwise.

  Another burning pain shot up from my ankle and a hand clamped down on it again. Thinking the eater was back, I tried to yank my leg away, but this time large, warm hands pressed back, twisting my ankle almost backwards and then back around. The stars blurred and winked out above me and I found a smoking rifle barrel in front of my eyes - an inch from my forehead. I was about to freak out again when someone nearby shouted “She’s clean!”

  A long, terrible instant later, the thin, tall soldier pulled back his rifle. From the look on his face, he had been ready to kill me without reservation or hesitation and was perhaps a little disappointed to be denied the chance. He quickly stepped off, over my head and toward the rear of the bus. My poor soldier – Sergeant Rock – was wrapping up my injured ankle. He looked to be fifty feet away, but he was right there with me. He didn’t look up at me at all but finished dressing the wounds, pulled the machine gun from over his shoulder and went back to pouring ammunition into the herd outside the bus.

  The world was still turning counter-clockwise. I couldn’t breathe well. I coughed and heaved, gasping for as much as I could pull into my lungs before my body kicked it back out again. I could smell blood and fireworks and my stomach clenched. I turned on my left side and puked so hard I passed out again. In that moment I thought I was drowning. I thought I’d never wake up again. And I was too tired to fight it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT – WHILE YOU WERE OUT

  Dear Diary: No one will ever use the phrase “the silence of death” after hearing the roar of a herd rolling across a clearing the size of a football field. Shortly after reaching the roof, I passed out from pain and loss of blood, but I remember sounds and images around me like from the dreams of total exhaustion, where the sensations of the world are there, alive around you but you know you’re asleep…there’s no way you could be witnessing such things. Eventually, much of what I thought I’d seen turned out to be worse in the context of what the soldiers protecting me were dealing with. This chapter is based on my hazy memories linked to those of the men who saved my life.

  I was the only civilian to escape the bus. I learned later from my sergeant that I was the only reason they kept on fighting. Maybe he was only speaking for himself, I don’t know. I’d like to think that they had others to drive them on. I’d hate to think that those men had no one else left in the world to inspire them to fight. I don’t feel proud or special about that. In fact, I feel I carry their burden of survival on my shoulders.

  Losing every one of the people inside their bus was a difficult defeat in an already traumatic and lost war. I cannot imagine being in their position and committing themselves to protecting all these people when they could have walked away and made their way home…or at least somewhere safer. To give of themselves this way and then “lose their assets” as my sergeant called it…that was a crippling blow to men like this. The growing sense of hopelessness in the endless crush of the herd made focusing on the mission of escaping even harder. But after a moment to catch their breath and make sure I was still alive – and uninfected – they all went back to work.

  The roof of the bus rippled and swelled as more and more eaters crushed in from two sides toward a center. Every so often, they heard the sound of window glass breaking outward into the herd around us. The bus became so heavy and packed it actually stopped shaking. Of course, it also sank an inch or two on its suspension, meaning the tallest of eaters could touch the roof with the tips of their shredded, boney fingers.

  That’s when, in the words of my sergeant, “Shit got real.” Each soldier reported the status of his ammo and weapon and they briefly talked exit strategy. The plan, according to my sergeant, was that if they lost all the civilians in their care and there was no hope of getting off that bus they would pull the pins on their last grenades and leap into the herd. My sergeant had thought on it long and hard: he got them to agree to give him their last grenades. He volunteered to jump into the bus so that the explosion would turn the bus into a bomb; a pipe bomb made of metal, glass, diesel fuel and splintered bone.

  And then, according to my sergeant, some “dumbass from the middle bus decided to send up a parachute flare” and light up the surrounding road.

  They sent up a field illumination flare – or “F.I.F.” - to see if there were any gaps, any path the bus could navigate through the herd to get to us. At the same time, the intense glow of the magnesium light suspended from a parachute lit up an area the size of a football stadium and gave the first terrible look at the sheer size of the herd.

  Drawn by the smell of our blood and the sweat and maybe even our fear they came in wave upon wave. “Woodstock numbers” one soldier said. Not dozens or hundreds…but thousands converging on our convoy from all directions.

  When one of the soldiers stopped to reload, five eaters could advance to hold ground or even take some, supported by the rows pushing in from behind. When they fell, they fell straight down or were pushed aside and stepped on by the next…then the next… After a while, the pile of bodies created by relentless gunfire… became a ramp.

  At some point a General Infantryman - the tall, thin soldier – stopped firing and watched the F.I.F. rocking back and forth on its chute, slip down below the tops of the surrounding trees. My sergeant saw him lower his weapon and, as he put it, “fade way” as the basketball-sized firework landed in a cluster of eaters about fifty yards behind the bus. They both watched the light die as eaters began to burn and smoke.

  My sergeant called him Stretch. He couldn’t recall his real name, unit or anything other than the fact he was lanky and awkward, and insanel
y brave until the size of the advancing army caused him to snap. He stood there at the rear of the bus staring down into the mass of eaters fighting over the smeared and shredded remains of the passengers who tried to escape. Without any hesitation, Stretch unsnapped his hip holster, pulled out his nine millimeter sidearm and shot himself in the temple. His body toppled over and down into the herd where it was immediately swarmed and devoured.

  After the last of the flare’s light faded and the herd stomped over the smoldering remains, there was still the sweet stink of rotten meat, musk and mold. And as the soldiers resumed firing into the crowd, the eaters continued piling up around us.

  One soldier called “I’m out” and started using the metal butt of his rifle to smash any face or scalp that rose above the roof line of the bus. The rest turned their attention to the front where the first ranks of eaters were crawling up over the windshield like ants swarming over a chocolate bar. I’ll try to work on a better simile later.

  Someone on the second bus fired another flare, this time without a chute and low, across the herd. At first my sergeant thought the shooter screwed up his shot or was tossed off balance, but as the flare tore through the herd, it spit out white-hot metal catching dried cloth and flesh on fire before sinking into a gap. It burned so hot that the eaters around it looked like glowing skeletons shaking and twitching as the superhot metal broiled and melted them.

  As eaters burned, those nearest the flames and glowing metal tried to shove or claw or even climb over other eaters to get away, shifting the weight of the herd just enough to take the pressure off the front of the second bus in our convoy. It pressed forward through a thin spot in the herd, picking up enough momentum to drive its armored grill through ribs and skulls and spinal columns.

  The soldiers on its roof held on for dear life as the bus rocked violently and pulled up alongside us. They called over to us, telling the soldiers to get ready to abandon the bus. Razor wire and iron plates scraped across each other, catching and grinding up the bodies caught between them as the driver swiped the left side of the bus. The pile of bodies rose so high that the bus could only push a few feet alongside before the driver had to make a hard turn to keep from getting stuck. Even then, the bus kept moving…slowly…to keep up the momentum. The soldiers were prepared for the hit, but the eaters on the hood were not; most of them toppled over and out of sight. My sergeant made sure I was lifted over first. I was followed by the two remaining soldiers as the bus rolled forward.

  Slowing down made the force of the herd an issue again. It was a short distance – maybe 50 yards – to the start of a sharp incline and the edge of the herd’s central mass. The sides of the bus looked as though it drove through a river of reddish-brown and deep gray-black paint, with splashes and sprays of gore up over the armor plates.

  Without a scent to drive them, eaters are like water. They follow gravity along the path of least resistance. They tend to wander downhill and southbound, which means that the largest herds will turn valleys into livestock shoots. Once we crested the nearest hill, we broke through the herd.

  Sometimes eaters follow noise, but they mostly follow scent. The smell of bus exhaust helped hide ours as we got to the other side of the hill and out of the herd completely. Unfortunately, the real truth of the matter is that we were no longer an easy feed. Far behind us, the last bus in the convoy remained; stuck on the road without power and out of ammunition. Once on the other side, a grim-faced lieutenant called in another “Gap Band.” Two minutes later, the valley behind us lit up brighter than the F.I.F. and the world shuddered… then burned.

  CHAPTER NINE – ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD

  Constable Jebediah – or ‘Jeb’ if you prefer – is an unsung poet. Most people cannot see beyond his sour look of constipation or the fact that he glares at people like he’s deciding between killing you or just beating you stupid. When Jeb speaks, there is a special music that most people just don’t hear, poetry of a dark soul like Baudelaire or Ginsberg. Just this morning – okay it was FOUR in the morning - he and Constable David were in the middle of an argument about whose turn it was to take watch on the roof. David was taking the low-stress, rational approach to the conversation by referencing, you know, “facts” when Jeb’s muse punched him in the testicles. From deep within his tortured artistic soul, he invited David to “go fuck yourself in the neck with a bread knife!”

  I add this to my little notebook of Jeb-isms alongside his classic “I’ve killed bigger shits than you!” – which makes me wonder if Jeb lives on a diet of giant mutant cockroaches, “I’ve fucked bigger shits than you” – which breaks my brain trying to figure it out – “Go cry the sand out of your vagina” – usually directed at David or Krantz – “Your dumb ass ain’t worth a quart of taint sauce”, – and “I wouldn’t stab you in the ass with my sister’s dick.” That last one would be a tasty study for both my favorite literature professor AND my abnormal psyche prof. The juxtaposition of sexual organs and implements of violence is a common theme in Jeb’s poetry, as is the weird mash-up of old standard insults. If I wasn’t so afraid of being stabbed by his genitals or fucked by his cutlery, I might ask him about his literary influences. Perhaps Bukowski or Baudelaire…maybe he’s like some lost David Mamet character that just wandered off a Chicago stage and into our world. That’s Jeb. If he had any sense of charity or decency, it was scrubbed clean from him long ago. But his art remains.

  Jeb was already here at Site #2210 – also known as HG World – when I arrived. I hear that another bus picked him up alongside the road, injured, wandering in circles, and muttering to himself. Some versions of the story have him carrying the scalps of some eaters in his fists. Sometimes, he runs out in front of the bus like The Hulk, but without pants – thought I think Krantz just made that one up to piss Jeb off. No one messes with Job to his face except The Mayor, Manager Jack and, of course, Harris. Everyone else treats him like an oncoming storm or a boulder on the trail – they prepare for and work around him.

  The Constables here are not police. They’re more like mall cops mixed with camp counselors. We have rules and they make sure the hundred and a few odd dozen folks in here follow them. They mediate problems between residents – we don’t use the word “refugee” – and try to keep things from getting out of hand to the point that the Mayor or Manager Jack have to get involved. Most disputes are about petty theft or just flaring tempers. Sometimes there are bigger issues, like a fight between some teenagers that turned ugly with a box cutter. Those bad seeds disappeared upstairs into the offices for a few days and came back model citizens.

  Oh, yeah…there’s a lock-up here in what used to be the cash control room. If you really piss off a Constable (or just look at Jeb the wrong way) you may end up there for a few hours and get a lecture from our Human Resource Counselor Jenny Jo, or Regina. Pardon my Middle English Saxon but those bitches are fucked up. More on them later.

  As for the constables, they are a diverse group, I’ll say that. If Constable David is wandering the floors, he’ll chat with people and find out what’s going on in the stacks. He’ll joke around, take notes on things people need or that need fixed. He’ll network and do some trading here and there – cigarettes and cold medicine here and there. Nice young guy who should be back in school with me instead of wearing a constable’s red apron wandering a prison town. He seems content with his situation here, doesn’t talk about the World Before or complain about anything but the long night shifts that he volunteers for. He lives in a little cabin he built up on the roof. It was supposed to be a shelter for guards to use in bad weather, but David somehow managed to keep it for himself.

  Constable Krantz is a glass bottle of anxious. He’s a skinny guy with big hands, thick kinky hair – which I love - and a face that reminds me of Beaker from the Muppets. I mean that in a good way. I like talking to him about books and TV shows. He has a way of making people forget that all those little things like TV and movies, music and books are all gone forever. In
public, he’s quiet and likes to spend time around women and girls. He’s a shy one, but doesn’t realize what a smooth talker he is. He and I have the same taste in women, it turns out. Funny.

  Constable Harris looks like Thor, god of Thunder. I’m told he used to be a professional wrestler. He’s married to a pretty, Earthy granola type named Ellen and they have a cute little boy named Zeke. I met them on the road in the middle bus that saved our lives. Specifically, I met Harris as he snapped my nose back into shape.

  “If it helps, I’ll let you punch me. But this is going to hurt. A lot.” Those were Harris’ first words to me. I heard the words, but I was thinking about these giant, rough face-hugger hands cupping the sides of my head and two thumbs pressing against the sides of each nostril, which felt like someone grafted a fat, wet clown nose to my central nervous system. It was the pain of Harris even touching it that brought me back to the world, but the burning electric shock of the sudden SNAP had me using words that would make Jeb blush. And I did punch Harris. I punched him in the chest, which was as useful as punching a leather sofa. But I felt better and he didn’t seem to mind. “Better?” he asked me. I wanted to say something mean to him about his leathery, tan face and all the scars around his forehead and cheeks, like someone pushed Fabio’s face into a belt sander as a cheap way of giving him a facelift. He looked like he’d had his own nose busted up a few times himself. But he had gentle, eye-blue eyes that you couldn’t stay mad at very long, especially as the pain killers they shot into my arm took effect.