Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth

by R. S. Merritt

  I settled in to get some rest. Ann crawled over to where I was and started checking on my shoulder. I was hoping she may curl up next to me for a bit of a snuggle. Instead, she seemed to get frustrated, trying to get the bandage to stay down using the little metal pokey thing. She pulled it off and flung it across the truck.

  “Stupid fucking thing won’t stick. Why do you keep getting hurt! Can you go a day or two without a concussion for god’s sake! You’re the guy I’m looking to spend my apocalypse with but I don’t see how the hell you’re possibly going to survive it. It’s like you try to get hurt. What exactly made you think you could ride a dirt bike? Why would you do that? What the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong with me? I’m falling in love with a complete fucking moron. Oh, my god.”

  Did she just say the “L” word? I reached out my hand to hold hers. She slapped my hand away.

  “Don’t touch me. I hate you. You’re going to get yourself killed. It’s seriously just a matter of time. Stop being an idiot!” She bent down and kissed me, looked at my arm bandage to make sure it was on good, then slapped me right in the face. Hard enough it hurt. Then she kissed me, started to say something, didn’t say anything, started crying and went over to sit in the golf cart, intentionally facing away from me.

  Her sobs echoed through the back of the truck. Loud enough where they were audible over the road noise. I looked over at Thomas. He was staring back and forth between me and her, eyes the size and shape of saucers. He saw me looking and gave me a shrug and a look that said to keep him out of it. I don’t think either one of us had ever heard her say that many cuss words in under five minutes before. It had been scary. My face still stung from the slap.

  Not knowing what to say to her or what else to do and thinking that uttering ‘Bi-Polar Much’ would just get me slapped again. I drifted away on my codeine cloud as the truck angled upwards and the engine started grinding hard, trying to get the truck up the first of many steep inclines as we moved into the mountains.

  Entry 31: Moonshine Fixes Everything

  I woke up to the back door noisily sliding up. The night sky was full of stars. There was a sharp chill in the air. My shoulder felt like it was encased in concrete. Pain radiated from it every time I shifted around. My little white pills of pain avoidance had mostly worn off at some point while I was passed out. Reeves was standing outside with Ginny.

  “Hey boss, how’s the arm?”

  “Delightful.” I struggled to sit up and he waved at me to just lay back down which I did gratefully. “Where are we anyway?”

  “Pulled over at some podunk gas station. I was hoping we’d find a lot of supplies here, but the place has been completely looted already. We’re pretty much out of food boss. What we did find was a few crates of moonshine. The tourist kinds. I don’t see the Deliverance type hillbillies slamming Raspberry-Mango flavored twenty proof before going out to find kayaking white bread city boys to make squeal like a pig.”

  Thomas and Ginny were staring at Reeves with absolutely no clue what he was talking about. If it were a year ago, I’d tell them to Google it and hope they did so in front of a large group of people and it somehow went straight to the scene Reeves was referring to. That would be hilarious. As it was, I had zero desire or reason to explain the reference to them, I just let them stare. Looking behind Reeves, I saw he had piled up the dolly from the truck with Moonshine. Great, now if I wanted to get good and sick I could slam some Blueberry Delight, official drink of sophisticated mountain men everywhere.

  “What the hell are we going to do with eighty gallons of moonshine?”

  “Drink it. We may be stuck in that cabin of yours for a long time. This stuff will keep us from freezing solid.”

  It was a horrible idea. I should have had him just leave it right there. He looked so happy though. He was practically hugging the stack of booze. I waved at him to go ahead and load it in the back. Him, Ginny and Ann started a little assembly line and quickly loaded it in.

  “Nothing else worth taking?” I asked.

  “No boss, this place has been picked clean. The moonshine was in a storage closet that was locked up. It looked like there should just be mops and crap in there, probably why no one had tried looking in there, the ‘shine was stacked up inside the closet instead.”

  “Ok. I guess time to roll out and get through these mountains before it starts snowing or a locust plague comes along or something else manages to happen to us.”

  Reeves nodded, waved to Ann and Thomas, grabbed a bottle of the ‘shine and headed for the cab. I was wondering if I should be concerned that he was taking a bottle of booze with him to go drive us through the mountains, in a big truck that had taken a lot of bullets. Then I remembered, he’d be sitting up in the cab with Ginny, who would have no problem flinging the booze out the window and taking over the driving if Reeves decided to be a moron.

  Cheered up by the thought of Reeves getting yelled at, I worked on making myself more comfortable on the comforter and pillows we had spread out on the floor. I was just starting to settle in and fall asleep when I looked up and Ann was standing there, leaning against the wall of the truck and staring at me. It figured, she probably wanted to talk.

  “We need to talk.” She said, sitting down next to me. She started poking around with my bandages. She handed me some pills to take and I swallowed them all with a big swig of water. I’d stopped even asking what she was feeding us. She waited until I had washed them down.

  “Your one eye is hosed, you just got shot in the shoulder and fell off a dirt bike onto your head, you’re covered in scars from more crap than I can even remember or probably want to know about.”

  “You also shot off part of my nose.” I added helpfully, wondering where she was going with all of this.

  “That’s not for sure. There was a lot of stuff going on in the cab when that happened. Stop trying to be cute.” She stared at me hard for a minute while I tried my hardest to look like I was taking this seriously. It would have been easier if I had known what ‘this’ was. As it was, I mostly wanted to go to sleep. I was fighting off a yawn, scared that would make it look like I wasn’t taking ‘this’ seriously. She lay down on the blankets next to me and threw an arm over me. I liked where ‘this’ was going!

  Then she started talking again. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. Can you please just try and think before you do stuff? Like life or death stuff? You’re our leader but that means you help us pick a plan and move forward with it. It does not mean you have to risk your life on every single action we take. Try and play to your strengths, you’ll live longer. I want you to live longer.” She kissed me again.

  I was floating. I was pretty sure it was mostly from her kisses but part of it may have been the big handful of pills she had me swallow. Thomas was busy coughing real loud to remind us he was back there and maybe we could practice kissing each other some other time and place? I felt like I’d dodged a bullet and was in a good place with her. As far as all the not being stupid stuff. Not much choice in the world of today when we only had a crew of five people. Especially when everyone I was leading seemed to have more skills than I did. I ended up being the guy who drew fire or charged the Zombies head-on as a distraction or whatever was needed for the good of the group. I didn’t see any of that changing, I also didn’t see trying to explain that to Ann. I did what most men have done since women discovered nagging and just went ahead and agreed with her. Promises made while on drugs, to a beautiful woman, who just kissed you twice, are not legally binding anyway in my book.

  Ann was asleep within a few minutes. I didn’t hear anything coming from Thomas so figured he had settled in to try and sleep as well. I was completely awake now. Ann had gotten my mind racing. Not necessarily with plans on how I could avoid danger moving forward. More like, trying to figure out our next moves. We were in a very desolate area up in the mountains now which meant there not many Zombies. However, since there was not a concentration of Zombies there were a lo
t more regular people wandering around. Regular people were proving to be a lot more dangerous than Zombies. If the people who had attacked us in Spartanburg had not been idiots, we would all be dead by now.

  Thinking of how easy we could die and wondering how I was going to fall asleep. I disengaged from Ann long enough to crawl over to the Moonshine and help myself to some ‘Watermelon Dew’. Give the world long enough and it could strip the manliness from pretty much anything. Tasted delicious though.

  We needed a place to settle in. We needed to start thinking more long term. Assuming we made it through the mountains and were able to head towards Pigeon Forge, TN and find the cabin without anything else happening we needed a plan to survive the Winter. It didn’t help that on top of Zombies, deranged and armed fellow survivors, unchecked forest fires, oncoming blizzards, and no food or other supplies to speak of. We now had to worry about Koreans. Ideally, we’d find a store to loot that would give us most of the supplies we’d need to survive the Winter. We could drag those supplies to the cabin, stock up on firewood, and enjoy a nice long break from this mess. Surrounded by snowed out roads that should give us a good bit of isolation.

  We would need to still keep a guard going at all times. The cabin had a big wraparound porch on the third floor that would be perfect for that. One person would just need to always be designated to be on patrol. I know we had binoculars and junk like that in the cabin. Plus, all my dad’s survival and hunting supplies.

  I realized I was thinking like my parents were definitely dead. I had held out hope for a little while on the way here that maybe they had managed to survive. At this point, we had seen so much widespread death that I knew the chances of anyone surviving were pretty small. I’d stopped thinking of what to say to them when I saw them and started wondering if we’d find them dead in the cabin. In my nightmares, sometimes we made it all the way there and then I had to put them down myself since they had turned and were stuck in the cabin.

  If anyone were going to survive something like this, it would be my dad. He was a country boy who loved hunting and being outdoors. His time in the military should help him out as well. No way to know for sure until we got there and then we would see what we would see. Short term, we needed to make sure we had enough gas to get to where we were going. I knew we still had most of a barrel of diesel left in the back so that should not be a problem. We were pretty much out of food and water. There was a stream by the cabin and it was on a well so water should not be a huge issue. There was typically a winters worth of firewood stacked up outside. We wouldn’t freeze to death as long as that was still there.

  We still had the golf carts and dirt bikes so those would be an asset. The truck was great but not the most subtle or easy to use vehicle. Once we got to the cabin we’d want to lay low for a while to keep from attracting too much attention. We’d need to check nearby cabins for Zombies or other survivors and loot them as much as we could. I was hoping we’d pass one of those giant outdoor camping stores before we got to the cabin. I assumed it would be pretty thoroughly looted already but hoped it would still have some shotguns, hopefully some ammo left, and camping supplies like sleeping bags and propane powered camping stoves would be great as well.

  I also needed a new knife. I’d reached for my Kabar a few times now and missed having it. There was no such thing as having too many weapons on us. Not when the whole world seemed pretty focused on trying to kill us.

  I was wondering how bad Pigeon Forge may be as the ‘Watermelon Dew’ finally kicked in and I gradually fell asleep. In my dreams, Zombies and Koreans could not compete with the memory of the kiss I had gotten earlier. For the first time in a long time, I actually did have sweet dreams. Not that I’d remember any of them in the morning.

  Entry 32: The Irish Flu

  I woke up with my head pounding. I’d finished the whole mason jar of girlie shine. It had tasted good last night, but now my tongue tasted like a rat had taken a dump in my mouth while I slept. Then the rat had crawled in my mouth, shed and died. Ann woke up, stretched, saw the empty mason jar I was trying to subtly move behind a box and immediately began letting me have it. Seriously, on her first breath of being awake she was yelling at me on the exhale. It must be some kind of record. Women everywhere would be proud. She should get a trophy. My god, my head hurt.

  “You do know you’re not supposed to drink alcohol with pretty much any of the medicine I’m giving you. You just got shot. You need to rest and be healthy and give your body time to heal. Remember the whole conversation we had about you trying not to be stupid? Maybe have a glass of wine or a couple of beers, not a whole freakin bottle of moonshine. Very manly flavor by the way.”

  You know that scene in the old animated Snow White movie where the dwarves are doing there ‘off to work we go’ bit and it shows them pickaxing the jewels out of the side of the mine. It felt like they were inside my head pickaxing away. Worse hangover ever. I just wish it had been tequila or something less humiliating than a bottle of Moonshine Jolly Rancher. I felt horrible. Also, why were we stopped?

  The back of the truck slid up. Ginny looked sleepy, Reeves looked like I felt. He took one look at me and laughed. He only laughed for about a second before putting his hand to his head.

  Ann and Ginny exchanged a disgusted look.

  “Assuming you ended up driving?” Ann asked Ginny.

  “Yep. Reeves got into the Adult Blueberry juice and asked me to drive for a while. We’re parked at a scenic overlook now. I’m thinking the sun will be coming up pretty soon. Wanted to talk to you guys about next steps before we just kept on driving. Also, I’m exhausted, so was thinking it was your guys turn to drive while we relaxed in the luxury car back here. Have some cigars and cognac and such.”

  I sat up. My head didn’t like it but I felt like I needed to contribute and try to appear less hungover.

  “Sounds good, we’ll sub out with you guys to do the driving for the rest of the day. I honestly have no idea what to expect once we get out of the mountains. I do know we need to find some supplies to take to the cabin with us. I figure the Zombie horde excitement starts up again once we start getting back to civilization. I’m way more worried about hillbillies attacking us while we’re on the road up here. I say we gas up and get moving.”

  Ann took the driver’s seat first. I settled into the passenger seat. We had left Thomas and the others in the back. I was hungover and one of my arms was pretty much useless. It occurred to me I would not be super useful up here. It was starting to get lighter outside. We were parked on one of those wide openings you see in the mountains and on beach roads and such for scenic overlooks. Ann reached up to put the truck in Drive and I asked her to wait a second. I reached over with my bad arm, very carefully, and held her hand. She looked over at me questioningly. The sun peeked over the mountain in front of us. Golden waves of light flooded the valley in front of us and splashed up the side mountain over the truck. Ann smiled, squeezed my hand and gave me a quick kiss.

  I kept my mouth shut so as not to ruin the moment by saying something dumb. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for setting that one up. I was hoping the gesture would make her forget that I’d downed a bottle of booze the night before after she handed me a bunch of painkillers. Either way, back off Casanova because I’m now the reigning king of romance up in this Penske.

  Ann was still smiling at me and holding my hand as she put the truck in drive and got ready to start the drive. I projectile vomited all over the dash, myself, and her. I couldn’t stop. My stomach just kept sending its contents through my mouth. She threw my hand off and tried to get as far away from me as possible. She was out the door and standing about ten feet away asking me if I felt Ok. The look on her face did not reflect the look you’d expect to receive as the king of romance. I was thinking my attempt to get her to forget I was hungover was a major failure.

  She disappeared from view.

  “Oh my god. It smells like somebody took a shit inside a watermelon t
hen microwaved the whole mess.” Reeves had been sent up to deal with me. “Ann says I’m going to be driving and that we deserve each other. She also told me to make you drink all four bottles of water I brought with me. The problem is, I’m going to hurl if I try and get in the cab with you. You smell bad boss. Like, bad.”

  Reeves stood outside the door for a few minutes. Hungover himself, looking queasy, and obviously trying to process how to deal with all this going on not ten minutes after the sun had come up. He turned and walked towards the back of the truck muttering about it being way too early.

  He came back with a comforter, some pillow cases and a bottle of cologne. He started spraying cologne everywhere and wiping down everything. He handed me the pillow case to wipe myself off with. It was pretty disgusting. The puke was steaming in the cold air of the mountain morning. Reeves got out of the truck at one point, walked calmly over to the four-foot concrete barrier separating us from the scenic view and spewed his dinner and Blueberry moonshine all over the scenic valley. Then he walked back and continued cleaning the cab. He finished and threw the comforter on the ground.