The Koreans started backing up. The one on the left yelled at the other two. Then the one on the left shot Thomas.
It’s a blur after that. I started firing and didn’t stop until I needed a new clip. I looked over at the Koreans and they were all laid out in various death poses on the ground. Blood puddles forming around them.
I looked over to check on Thomas, he was in Ann’s arms. His eyes were opened and staring vacantly into space. Ann’s lap had a pool of blood in it. Reeves and Ginny were ripping at Thomas shirt and trying to put direct pressure on the wound.
It was too late. Anyone could tell it was too late. He must have got hit in the heart by the bastard. Everything was moving in slow motion. I wondered if the blood would seep into the mulch or stain it. I wanted to think about anything but Thomas being dead.
I moved woodenly over to where Reeves and Ginny had Thomas laid on the ground, his shirt ripped off. The big hole in his chest had stopped pumping out blood. His eyes were staring at me. Accusing.
I could have yelled to fire. We didn’t have to wait for them. I screwed up. Thomas was dead.
Ann was catatonic. She wasn’t moving. Just sobbing. Her dead nephew on the ground beside her.
Entry 42: Pyre
It is beyond me how long we stood there. The world seemed to stand still while we all tried to wrap our minds around what had happened. I wanted to hold Ann but couldn’t seem to move my arms. My heart was too heavy. In the distance, I heard noises.
Life sped up to normal speed. The noises I was hearing were Zombies. We’d just Ok Corralled main street here at Dollywood and now those thousands of Zombies we had seen hanging out in the valley would be headed this way to see what was up. We needed to be not here and we needed to do it fast.
I pulled Ann up and we all started to hesitantly move away. Ann started yelling we couldn’t leave him. I looked over at Reeves, I was in no shape to do what needed to be done but hoped he could. He did, he went to Thomas’s body and picked it up and threw him across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Thomas, who had constantly made us all laugh. Thomas, who had loved video games and had a crazy fascination with pranking us with water balloons. Even now, his cast was hanging down Reeves back. The poor kid had spent most of the last year breaking his arm in various places.
It was my turn to help Ann. She leaned on me and stared at Reeves as he jogged by holding Thomas. The body dangling obscenely over his shoulders.
“We have to bury him. He can’t be left for those things to eat.” Ann got her first words out.
“We’ll take care of it.” I promised her. We both kept moving towards the gate to get on the back lot. Ginny disappeared through it up ahead of us.
As soon as Thomas was out of our sight Ann sped up. She couldn’t bear the thought of him being out of her sight. She had been more than a regular aunt to him. She had been like a second mom when his mom was alive and during the last year she had been his full time surrogate mom. She had known Thomas from birth. Had bathed and fed him. Changed his diapers. He had slept in her bed with her when she baby sat him.
Now he was gone.
Shot in front of her.
We ran. We ran to where the Toyotas were parked. We did not see anyone so I peeked in the garage and saw that Reeves and Ginny had lay Thomas on the floor and surrounded him with fireworks and were dumping on gasoline. This did not seem like a great idea. We went to where they were.
“Don’t worry Ann. We’re going to send him off proper. He gets a warrior’s burial. He wanted to shoot these fireworks from the second he saw them.” Reeves continued to position the fireworks around the body of Thomas. Someone had shut his eyes, so now he just looked like he was sleeping. Ginny crawled in and gave him a kiss. Ann did the same. I tried to think of something to say or do but no words came to me.
The thought screaming in my head now was that if we did not get the hell out of here soon we’d all be dead. I didn’t care so much about me but it would shred my soul to see Ann or Reeves or Ginny go down so soon after Thomas. There was one of those moments of dead silence that happens sometimes while we all stared down at Thomas. Saying our goodbyes in our heads. Wishing him a peaceful journey. I whispered under my breath.
“You made it. You did it right and brave. You did it the way to make everyone proud of you. Go with love. Be at peace”
Ann kissed and hugged me. Reeves and Ginny both gave me an appreciative look. I had evidently not whispered under my breath as much as said it out loud. A loud moan from directly outside broke the silence. We scattered in different directions. Ginny and Ann jumping in separate trucks and starting the engines. Reeves ran to open the garage door while I ran to cover him. He flung the door open and a big fat Zombie flung itself at him. Another two were already running towards me.
I walked shots up the front of the ones coming at me until they both dropped to the ground. I ran over to where the fat one was trying to bite Reeves elbow while Reeves was trying to beat it to death with his elbow. Not having time to screw around, I put the gun on the things ear and angled it up and pulled the trigger twice. It collapsed on top of Reeves. I heard another moan behind me and spun around shooting at Zombies as I turned. Five of them were running towards us across the street. I knocked out two of them and started reloading.
Behind us, Ann jumped out of her truck and threw a match in the gasoline puddle surrounding Thomas. She then turned and ran towards her truck as a big pillar of fire shot into the sky. Reeves worked his way out from under the obesity covering him and gave me an angry look as he hobbled over to the truck with Ginny in it and climbed in. A second later the barrel of his AK shot out of the window and began bellowing fire as he shot at the Zombies scrambling towards us. A huge waft of flame filled the garage as Ann drove the truck to me and I climbed in.
Explosions were happening all around us. I couldn’t breathe. I was pretty sure being stuck in the middle of a fireball could scar your lungs pretty good. I was definitely going to have to grow me some new eyebrows.
“Sorry, I was worried we wouldn’t have time to light the fire and he’d be left lying in that puddle in the warehouse.”
Ann’s skin was bright red. She had been pretty close when she threw the match. I yelled over at her to be heard above the noise.
“You did the right thing! It needed to be done and he’d have liked all this havoc. It’s straight out of a Bruce Willis movie.” I let her know this while we rolled out the garage and followed Reeves towards the access road that would lead us out of town without having to wander the valley of death again.
The fire grew behind us. Claiming all the buildings in the backlot, I wouldn’t be surprised if we burned the whole park down. If there were any Zombies in Tennessee that had missed the bombing runs, we should have lured them in with this display we were putting on. It seemed like a fitting tribute to a kid who had been so tough.
I looked over at Ann, she was driving and staring straight ahead. Tears tracing shiny paths down her cheeks before dripping off her face. I reached over and held her hand. We drove in silence.
Entry 43: Dig Two Graves
We drove in silence along the highway. Reeves eventually pulled over after about an hour’s worth of driving. We had stopped passing Zombies running towards the noise. We could still see a red glow in the air when looking back in that direction. We were standing in the emergency lane in between the two vehicles. We were all looking broken.
A day ago we had plans to spend the winter at an amusement park. Today, we were on the road again and missing the kid who had been a lot of the heart in this team. We didn’t have a plan or a sense of direction.
“I want to kill them all. They took everything, they took my sister and now my nephew. We know they’re out West somewhere. I want to kill them all.” Ann made this pronouncement out of nowhere. It came from the hollow place in her that had been her love for Thomas. She needed to fill that void. If she needed to fill it, I was going to be there for her.
“I’m in.
”
Reeves nodded. “Hell yeah.”
Ginny shook her head yes. “They shouldn’t get away with this. It’s not right how much they’ve gotten away with already. I want to kill them all and chase them out of the country too. Then I want to hunt them down and finish them off. I want them scared.”
“Ok. So, is this our new mission? This the new plan?” I asked. “This is not something we’re going to come back from. This isn’t us fighting for survival. This is us swinging hard until we go down.”
“I’m in. I’d rather fight than keep trying to find places to hide and eat crap out of cans until we get old and die. Let’s take the fight to the assholes who did this to us.”
I appreciated Reeves enthusiasm. Looking around at everyone’s face I saw the resolve carved into their eyes. This was now a team with a purpose and god help the Koreans.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the sat phone. I powered it up and waited for it to some on. Then I placed a call and put the phone on speaker.
“Hey Lieutenant. Can you tell me the best place for us to go if we want to start a Korean Barbeque?”
Zournal: Book 3: Scorched Earth Page 23