We pulled onto I-95 and started going North. We had only gone a few hundred feet off the exit when a military style Humvee came cruising towards us from the opposite direction. The Humvee braked to a stop and the driver got out and gave us a friendly wave. Another guy had casually climbed in to sit behind the mama deuce and he looked ready to rock if need be. Reeves looked over at me and I considered telling him to throw it in reverse and get the hell out. Thinking feverishly and looking around for any ideas I went ahead and told Reeves to pull up in front of them and I’d get out and go see what was up.
Reeves came to a stop. I pulled up my big boy pants and bounced out of the truck and walked over towards the Humvee. I was about twenty feet away when the man who had been driving told me that was close enough. He followed that statement by giving me an introduction that explained the distance.
“Sorry, I’m Lieutenant Wilson, Navy Seal, we’ve been out on a sub for the last six months or so and isolated from any virus that was spread. We’re pretty sure the virus was engineered to die out by now but we’re not real keen on taking a lot of chances with that theory. Especially since our doc and the corpsmen keep using a lot of weasel words like ‘probably’ and ‘percentage’ and ‘it seems safe to assume’. Those bitches must not think it’s too safe to assume since they’re not out here driving around doing recon.”
“Sub for the last six months. That’s a lucky draw. You guys have any idea what’s been going on in the world?” I looked behind me and noticed the whole crew had decided to join me with the exception of Reeves who was keeping the truck going and Thomas who was casually sitting in the truck bed. His casual position happened to put him right where the majority of our spare weapons were sitting at. Both of them were obviously intent on trying to listen.
Lieutenant Wilson looked at us, “You guys remember a while back when North Korea was making a lot of noise about developing nuclear weapons they could drop on the US? It was all over the news that they were testing long range capabilities.”
We all nodded. The only reason I had been able to easily recognize the symbol on the helicopter that had flown over us had been because of all the coverage that had been on the news of the missile testing.
The Lieutenant continued, “Well if you remember all that kind of went away. It may have gone away because most of their engineers and scientists started killing themselves in ways that could never be tied back to any foreign power. The problem was that we, or whoever may have been behind it, did not kill their bio weapons people. They weren’t considered a threat. That was a mistake.”
The Lieutenant looked around at all of us as we digested the information he had just provided. He gave us a minute to ask any questions or anything and when none of us said anything he started talking again.
“The virus originated in North Korea. All this crap I’m telling you is super-secret but who the hell are you going to tell? We need you to do some work for us so consider this a down payment. North Korea shoved a crap-load of their people into big bunkers under the mountains with self-contained air and enough food to last a few months. They had been starving their people for years to build up that food supply. Then they sent people out with the virus to every country through their embassies and the Chinese embassies and any other way they could get it out there. They released it all at the same time. They targeted all the global centers of trade, all the big cities, all the military bases and anywhere else they thought would make it spread the fastest and have the biggest impact.”
The Lieutenant looked around to make sure we were all still following him. We were, he continued speaking.
“It spread, half the fleet got sick at sea. Orders were to isolate and try to contain the virus. Finally, an Admiral got in contact with us and told us what had happened. He gave us a set of orders and we followed them then cut holes in the ocean until we ran out of supplies so we headed back to base. Been over at Kings Bay ever since.”
Reeves spoke up, “What do you want us to do?”
“I just want to leave you a sat phone and as you guys continue your journey I’d just like to know what you see. Especially anything related to threats; infected, survivors that pose a threat, North Koreans. If you can send a text on the Sat phone once a day with any updates it will track your position and help us gather intel. We’re having a hard time access the satellites to get data so we’re back to needing feet on the ground.”
Frank spoke up and told the Lieutenant we’d seen the North Korean helicopter on our way here. Wilson noted the place we had seen the helicopter in a log book he pulled out for that purpose.
“Are the North Koreans invading?” I asked the Lieutenant.
He looked at us all for a few seconds. “We’ll be dealing with a substantial advanced force but their original plan to colonize the world after they wiped everybody out is not going to happen. That admiral who contacted us. He watched his daughter turn and eat his granddaughter right in front of him. He then had to shoot his daughter. I’m pretty sure after he called us he ate his own gun since he told us his daughter had managed to bite him.”
He looked us all in the eyes, “A people who will unleash this hell on earth have no right to inherit it after they wipe the rest of us out. They didn’t dig the bunkers deep enough, there mountains weren’t high enough, to escape the fury of the fleets finest nuclear submarines, unleashing the world’s most powerful weapons on them. That whole country, including all the cowards huddling in bunkers waiting for the rest of the world to die, is now a big ass radioactive parking lot.”
Wilson sighed and looked around at us after he finished talking. “Anyway, if you run into any North Koreans I suggest shooting first if you get the chance. They’re not really happy with round-eyes at the moment. I’m going to leave two of the sat phones here with booklets on how to use them. It would help us with trying to get everything running again and trying to help out the survivors if you can feed us info. We’ll try and send you info as well as we get it. It will queue up so just try turning it on once a day to conserve the battery. I left a charger too if you happen to figure out how to get power. I know you’re headed to Tennessee, but if you change your mind feel free to head towards the Navy Base.”
With that last comment tossed at us the sailors said their good byes and good lucks and the Humvee rumbled past us on the way back to base.
Entry 6: See-Saw Skillz
“Well, that was messed up.” Thomas summarized the encounter as we all watched the Humvee rolling away down I-95 towards the exit for Kings Bay Naval Station.
Everyone nodded in agreement as we started walking back towards the truck.
“You called it.” I said to Frank as he was hopping into the bed of the truck.
Frank nodded. “Yeah, and I understand the response. I’ve been all over the world though and I can tell you those North Koreans sitting in those bunkers didn’t have the slightest clue why they were in there. My bet would be the military and all the leadership had pretty much already cleared out in case there was retaliation. They left those poor bastards to their fate. Either that, or all those people did get out of those bunkers and we just added a few million enemies to the roster, once they get them over here and armed.”
I needed to stop talking to Frank. He was way too wise in the ways of the world. I had been pretty stoked that we had not let the Koreans get away with mass genocide. Leave it to Frank to remind me that we had responded with a mass genocide attempt on them. If it was successful, then we had less to worry about but if it wasn’t then I agreed with Lieutenant Wilson, they would not be too happy with Americans right about now.
We all got in the truck and settled back in, Reeves started the engine back up and looked over at me.
“North.” I said, no one disagreed. We’d had enough of the courtesy of the US Navy in Jacksonville to be weary of that invitation. Reeves whistled Dixie and got us rolling.
We were all quiet and contemplative for the first few miles. I pulled out the beat to crap map I h
ad grabbed off the floor of a mini mart and started trying to figure out where my parents lived. I really missed SIRI. I was staring at the box containing the Sat phone equipment. We had not actually agreed to contact them. I didn’t know if it would be a good thing or not to keep them apprised of our situation and location. I didn’t really want to risk being rounded up at some later date if they had my location on some master file somewhere. On the other hand, I could see how it would help them to organize survivors and start rebuilding which could eventually help us out as well.
I decided to put the Sat phone question to the group later that day, although I was pretty sure they were all going to say no.
The interstate was surprisingly easy to drive. It looked like the Navy had been taking care of cleaning up the roads. Staring at the tiny scribbles on the coastline of the map I tried to see what military bases were after Kings Bay off the interstate. After staring for a while I gave up and asked Reeves.
“I think there is a pretty big Navy base in Charleston. They could be going back and forth in between those two locations on patrol and keeping it cleaned up to get back and forth. It’s pretty desolate in that direction so maybe not the big population centers needed to make the Zombies a huge problem. I’d assume Charleston is packed full of Zombies though. Or they figured out the pied piper trick and the harbor is clogged with floating bodies.”
That was not a vision I wanted to contemplate. All too recently we had been on a boat that was dead in the water drifting towards a cliff of the washed up dead. I’d revisited that moment quite a few times in my dreams, but in my dreams the boat didn’t start back up and we ran into the cliff with no way to back ourselves off of it. Being buried under an avalanche of decaying corpses while the living Zombies tried to get at you too. Looking back on it that way, I could almost see why Chrissie had stuck that gun in her mouth.
We drove on. Reeves tapped the dash and looked at me and I nodded. We were running low on gas and we had both seen the signs for a rest area coming up ahead. Reeves pulled into the rest area with all of us alert and ready for action. It was the middle of the day so if there were Zombies in the area they should see us and come running. Sure enough, one came crawling out from underneath a car and took a few steps towards us then picked up speed and started running. Frank had jumped down from the bed of the truck with Thomas scrambling after him. Reeves pulled to a stop and the rest of crawled out. Ginny slid over behind the wheel of the truck in case we needed a fast getaway. The girl wasn’t old enough to legally get her license and she definitely drove better than the rest of us.
I pulled my sword out of the truck. It was starting to rattle around a little now when I swung it but everything still seemed connected with it. My body groaned at the prospect of having to put down Zombies. On top of being horrifying, disgusting and mortally dangerous if you made the smallest mistake, it was a serious workout.
This one Zombie coming towards us was the only one who had come out to play so far. It looked like a woman in her thirties. She was covered in filth and oil and a flap of her skin seemed to be hanging off her leg. In the places her skin was visible, you could see the busted blue of the capillaries and veins underneath. Her eyes were red and crusty. She ran with a limp, screaming and groaning with lust for the normal humans she saw in front of her. We didn’t know her story, how she got here or ripped open her leg or why she was the only one hanging out in the parking lot. I did witness her ending though. It was very anticlimactic. She ran straight at Frank, who swung the handle part of a sledgehammer at her, knocking her to the ground. As she struggled to get back up and at him, Thomas stepped forward and ended her story with his metal stair pole he’d been carrying around for what seemed like forever now.
The crumpled, mostly nude, grease and dirt covered body of the woman looked frail and pathetic once the life and anger had been snuffed out of it. I must be getting soft, I felt sorry for her and sad. I shook my head to clear it, ran my hand down the front of my face and got back in the game. I noticed Thomas and Ann had pulled out rifles and were standing over watch. Thomas had gotten back in the bed of the pickup and Ann had climbed on top of a bright red Kia SUV. Reeves and Frank were fumbling around with cars, trying to get gas lids to open so they could siphon enough gas out of them to keep us going for a while. They were carrying around a big red container to put the gas in and had a couple of plastic tubes and a cutoff length of garden hose we had been using to siphon off gas.
They were in charge of siphoning, I was in charge of walking around with them and keeping an eye out for threats while they got the gas, Thomas and Ann were over watch to keep us all covered and Ginny was keeping the truck ready in case we needed to leave quickly. Frank was fitting in with us great. We were functioning better as a team than ever and I hoped if we kept that up we’d be able to get through this ordeal without anyone else getting hurt. I realized that was some pretty crazy thinking, but you have to hold out some optimism or you might as well just hang it up.
The plan was to top off the tank and head North until we hit 26. We’d head West once we hit 26, that got us off the road before we ran into too many more Navy patrols hopefully. 26 should take us all the way to the mountains. We’d run through a few major cities but we were betting on topping off our tanks and running through those cities hard and fast. Because driving fast through Zombies always worked out so great. Whatever, it still beat walking our asses through the woods to go around. Walking sucks. Walking hundreds of miles is ridiculous. I’m assuming at some point the gas will stop working or we won’t be able to get cars to start anymore, at that point we’ll need to figure something out or just not go anywhere because walking was still going to suck.
In the meanwhile, we now had the truck topped off and not one, but two, of those plastic gas jugs filled up and sitting in the back. We’d try and avoid touching the jugs if we were able to fill up off other cars and use the jugs as a reserve. We got on the road and started nearing the Savannah exits. There were a lot more cars on the road but enough of them had been pushed into the median and ditches to allow for us to drive though without too much stress. We continued up the interstate. We went around a long curve and all of us were looking forward to breaking out of the traffic snarl and getting back to the open road.
Reeves slammed on the brakes and we careened off the bumper of a corolla, causing it to roll further into the ditch it had been hovering over already. I was watching the corolla roll down the hill and turning around to tell Reeves it wasn’t a good idea to mix prescription medicine and hard alcohol when I saw why he had hit the brakes. About twenty feet in front of us, hundreds of Zombies let out a huge roar and moved towards us in a giant wave.
There was not enough space to turn around. Reeves put it in reverse and started driving backwards fast. He did great for the first five minutes then started slowing down to look for a place to maybe turn around now that we had some breathing room and ran right into a concrete barrier that had been knocked over sideways. There was a loud screeching noise followed by us no longer moving backwards. I jumped out of the car, Frank and Thomas were already standing outside the door. I yelled for Reeves to hit the gas and saw the issue. The rear tires were moving but they were about a foot off the ground.
“Ann, Reeves come back here and help us! Ginny, put it in Drive and punch it when we yell!” I barked out the orders, I figured this was a good time to take on that leadership role we were always talking about. We probably had a good two or three minutes before the Zombies started showing up. Plenty of time. If this didn’t work, we could just go do that walking in the woods for days’ thing we all loved so much.
With the screeching growing in volume, I yanked down the tailgate and had everybody climb aboard. It looked like it was enough. The back of the truck slowly went down, until the wheels were touching the ground.
“Now!” I yelled. Ginny punched it. The truck bounced way up in the air, came down hard and cleared the obstacle. Ginny already had the brakes engaged so barely eve
n collided with the side of the minivan that had been resting in front of her.
Ginny was an awesome driver. The rest of us showed that we had horrible passenger skills. The truck being thrown up in the air flung all of us about ten feet in the air. We did not land gracefully. We did not land on a flat, soft, stable platform. We landed in the middle of a bunch of cars and concrete crap tilted at various angles. We landed hard, with very little time to prepare ourselves, none of us had been expecting to go rocketing into the air. I pulled myself out of a pile of junk on the road that was mostly stuff that had been thrown out of our truck. All my parts seemed to be working. I looked around to make sure the others were ok.
They weren’t. Frank was laying on the ground, not moving. Thomas was bent over what looked like a broken arm, again. Ann had blood all over her face, dripping from what was probably a broken nose. Reeves was limping but seemed Ok otherwise. I had gotten off pretty easy.
Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth Page 4