We followed at the tail end of the caravan. When we approached the barricade at Thompson Lane, Howard stopped the truck and I quickly exited.
Howard looked out through the mesh of hardware cloth covering the window. “I sure hope he don’t get pissed and do something to you.”
“I don’t think he will.” I said. The truth was I had no idea how he would react. Howard was worried, it was plain to see. He nodded, put on the night vision gear and waited. I jogged over to my Ford Ranger, which was nestled among the abandoned cars. I turned my headlights on and Howard immediately turned his off. He drove off, travelling west on Thompson Lane. They were going to take another route back to the farm while I caught up with them and maintained a fifty yard gap.
We arrived at the intersection a few minutes later. I sat in my truck and waited. The Captain and Andie walked up a moment later. He looked at the truck and scowled.
“Where the hell is the tanker and your friends?” He demanded.
“They left.”
“Why? I didn’t authorize this.” The tone of his voice indicated his temper was rising.
I shrugged. “They had other things to do. Why is it so important Captain? We pulled off a successful mission. You now have almost five hundred gallons of gas. I had hoped you would be pleased.”
“Get out of the damn truck.” He snarled and reached for the door handle. It was locked.
“Not a good idea.” I said.
He paused. “And why not?”
“Because, when I get out of the truck it is the signal for my friends to open fire. I took the precaution to have a couple of snipers set up, in case you acted the way you are acting right now.” His eyes arched in understanding. He started to reach for his sidearm.
“I strongly recommend you keep your hand away from your sidearm, Captain.” He stopped and glared at me.
“Captain, I believe it’s time for you and me to have a little heart-to-heart. We are not your minions. I would like for us to continue to work together for a common goal, but your behavior right now is giving me second thoughts.” I said.
He leaned forward slightly. “You don’t think I can kill you before your friends can get a shot off?” He growled.
I nodded slightly. “You could, but then we’d both be dead. What good is that? I’d rather us part on friendly terms, but you seem to have a lopsided perspective of our relationship. Let me edify you, you do not order us around. We do not kowtow to you. If you want a thousandth man Captain, you must be one in return. I promised you fuel, and we delivered. We don’t owe you anything else.”
The Captain glared at me a moment longer. He pointed one of his meaty fingers at me a moment and stomped off. He was met at the bus by two of his men and it appeared they had a quiet, but heated discussion. Andie lingered beside my truck.
“He’s pissed. Boy is he pissed.” She said under her breath.
“Yeah, I suppose. He’ll get over it.” Andie stifled a chuckle.
“Are you and I going to be enemies now?” I asked.
She bit her lip, as if coming to a decision. “Do you know where College Grove is?” She asked.
“Yeah. Henry Horton Highway runs right through the middle of it, right?”
She nodded. “At the fork, where Horton Highway splits with Shelbyville Highway, there’s a store. We cleared it of zombies a couple of weeks ago. It’s abandoned now and I don’t think anybody goes around there. Would you meet me there in two days? At sun up maybe? By yourself?”
I looked at her a long moment. “Okay, if I can.” She nodded and started to say something else. The Captain yelled for her. She looked at me a moment longer and then ran back to the bus. I waited for them to drive away and then waited ten minutes more. When I was satisfied, I flashed my headlights. Julie emerged a few seconds later with her AR-15. She ran to me and got into the truck.
“It looked like it was going to go bad for a minute. How’d it go?” She asked. I filled her in as we drove home.
Chapter 4 – The Journal
This is the journal of Harold “Boom-Boom” Walsh. I was, at one time, an aspiring medical student. However, due to unforeseen misfortunes, I had to drop out of college, and found myself installed in the occupation of a deputy sheriff when the worldwide outbreak struck the city of Nashville in inexorable force. I watched in helplessness and fear as the inmates became infected. Oddly, three of us seemed to be immune. Two of us had tower duty, locked away from the rest, when they started turning on each other. Other deputies fled for their lives and abandoned us. We managed to separate ourselves from the infected, and were thus safe, safe being a subjective state of mind.
In summation, Sherry (my other c0-worker) and I found ourselves with over one hundred infected inmates. They were confined in their cells of course, so we were relatively safe. There were so many of the infected roaming the streets of downtown Nashville, we did not dare go outside. We tried several times, but quickly turned back lest we succumbed to a most unpleasant death. We had taken inventory of the food wares and found we had enough to feed us for several months. The water was still running and we had generators. So, instead of seeking escape, we elected to lock ourselves in the jail. It was safer.
I have started this journal on the second week of our self-imposed quarantine. The infected inmates have not eaten food, nor drank any fluids during this entire time. It is at this time when our experiments started.
Almost all of the inmates are infected. We have one inmate who appears healthy. However, he is an intemperate sort. When I tried to check on him, he responded by throwing feces on me. I use a broom handle to slide his tray of food to him. He thanks me by throwing shit at me.
The noises these things make, combined with the putrid odor, is enough to drive one mad. I hated it, but every time we attempted to go outside, the streets were roaming with those things. There were far too many. We were effectively trapped.
Sherry and I broke open the evidence locker last night and found some marijuana. I think the weed, in combination with all of the moaning and shrieking, were the seeds for our idea. We had no idea why some people became infected and why others did not. There were many unanswered questions. Sherry thought of it first. I think there is an evil streak in her. She suggested we conduct experiments on the infected. She thought it would be amusing and a fun way to pass the time. I reluctantly agreed, but only because I thought it might help me understand this infection better.
We started with sensory experiments. We would make noises at various ranges and at various distances. We would blink a flashlight on and off. We would use various things to induce motion stimuli. We tried to maintain scientific standards, but to be honest, we were lax. In summation, the infected inmates seemed to maintain most of their senses. Their sight, smell, and hearing seemed to remain intact with only a small amount of degradation. I’ve no idea about their sense of taste.
The sensory experiments segued into other tests. We intentionally withheld food and water from them. It did not matter. Three weeks later and they were still alive. When we would slide a tray of food, or a cup of water through the slot, the infected inmates would ignore it and try to grab at us. The second experiment was also initiated by Sherry. I had found the key to the armory and we had armed ourselves. Sherry had a Glock forty caliber which she decided to experiment with. One of the infected inmates was a large, muscular gangbanger in his twenties. Sherry began the experiment by aiming her weapon through the food slot and shooting him in the shins. He seemed oblivious to the pain and repeatedly tried to attack us by slamming against the cell door. She giggled like a schoolgirl as she worked her way up his torso. The test subject finally collapsed when Sherry shot him between the eyes. We left him lying in the cell. He didn’t move for several hours. We finally got up the nerve to open the cell door and check on him. We confirmed his status, he was deceased. Our first experiment yielded the following conclusion: a head shot was the fastest method for killing one of these things.
I found myself no
dding, and closed the notebook. I was intrigued, but I was also very tired. Julie had pulled a pillow over her head to block out the soft glow of the candle I had on the nightstand. I blew it out and snuggled up beside her. She let out a brief moan and wiggled her butt up against me. I silently thanked God for bringing the two of us together and drifted off to sleep.
I probably slept four hours before awaking during a dream about the journal. I guess my desire to read it had crept into my nocturnal rest and wouldn’t go away. I carefully got out of bed, put a pair of jeans on, and went into the den. It was nearing the end of July and it had been a hot summer. We only ran the air conditioner sparingly, so the house was warm and humid. I opened a couple of windows to let some of the cool morning air inside, lit a couple of candles, settled in Rick’s old chair, and opened the journal to the page I had dog-eared last night.
Our next experiment of sorts was an attempt to get two infected inmates to attack each other. Sherry and I donned riot gear, armed ourselves with Taser shields and entered a cell. Upon reflection, it was an ill-conceived idea, but an accidental experiment was performed. The Taser shields had no effect on them! We were successful in getting one of them handcuffed and leg shackled, but it was only through sheer overpowering of the test subject, and not the stunning effect of the Taser shock. Sherry pricked her finger and put a few drops of blood on it (the subject is a male, but it seems malapropos to assign gender to these things now), and then we shoved him into another inmate’s smell. The unhindered inmate did in fact attack the subject with Sherry’s blood on him, but the attack only lasted a few seconds. He aggressively bit our handcuffed subject, and then seemed to lose interest. Handcuffed subject was not aggressive to the other infected inmate, only toward us.
Next experiment: Attempts to stimulate pain. In summation, we tried many things in an attempt to cause pain to the subject. None appeared to have worked. Or, if they did work, the test subjects showed no physical reaction to the pain stimuli.
I will spare the details and for purposes of brevity, simply list the tests:
Burning - We started with boiling water and escalated to a propane torch.
Cutting - We started with slight cuts, deeper cuts, disemboweling, and dismemberment.
Poisoning - The first phase was forcing drain cleaner down the throat of the test subject, and then we injected the same subject in its arm. You could clearly see the caustic effects of the lye burning through the skin. No reaction to the obvious pain was noted.
We attempted some other, more intense, pain stimuli. None of them produced a physical reaction. Hypothesis: whatever infection this is, it kills or neutralizes the section of the brain which reacts to pain.
When our imagination of pain stimuli was exhausted, we moved on to other experiments. We attempted to drown a subject and locked one subject in a freezer with a supply of dry ice. Both subjects were rendered inert within comparably the same amount of time a live human would. We thought they were dead, but when they were exposed to air, they returned to consciousness within minutes. The test subject we put into the freezer was also frozen stiff. Within an hour at regular room temperature, the subject had thawed out to the point where it was at least partially ambulatory.
It is at this point where we decided on another experiment. We used the frozen test subject. While it was still moving slowly, we strapped him down on a table. Once it was completely secured, we cut his skull cap off.
Holy shit, I thought. Boom-Boom and his sidekick Sherry were serious about their experiments. I took a break and went into the kitchen. I found a dark roast blend someone had already ground up. During one of our forays, we had happened upon a Starbucks cafe relatively untouched by looting or vandalism. We procured several bags of their products in various blends. It was a wonderful find. I had a coffee percolator rigged to a battery. I got it going, poured myself a good sized mug, and walked back into the den.
Macie had woken up. She made her way to the den and sat awkwardly on the couch. She was wearing a bathrobe and with her large baby bulge, she was finding it difficult to keep the robe completely closed down below. I pretended not to notice. She still had lines on her face where she had been sleeping, but her hair was freshly brushed. Although her face was a bit puffier now from the weight gain, I grudgingly admitted to myself she was a very beautiful mom-to-be.
“The baby has been kicking for the last couple of hours. I’ve given up on sleep. What are you doing?” She asked.
“Just a little reading while it’s quiet.” I looked down at my mug. “Here, I’ll fix myself another.” I handed it to her and retrieved a fresh mug.
“Thank you.” She said quietly when I walked back into the den. I sat back in the chair and pointedly ignored her.
I had been to an autopsy once, back when I was in school. I remembered watching in fascination as the technician cut the scalp and then peeled it back over the face. She then used a small power saw to cut through the skull. I vividly recalled the distinct popping noise when the skull cap was pried off. I tried to repeat the process I had seen, although my tools were limited to a lock-blade knife and a Dremel saw. Although my technique was quite sloppy, I was successful in removing the skull cap without damaging the brain. The test subject remained alive (?) during this process.
What we observed was startling. The brain itself was the color of obsidian, and it smelled like nothing I have ever experienced before. The spidery veins in the brain tissue were literally… undulating? Pulsating? I quickly backed away and put on my gas mask. Sherry laughed at me scornfully.
“Zach?” I stopped reading and looked up to see Macie looking at me. She had managed to fold her legs in a ladylike fashion, which was good. The last thing I needed was Julie walking in while I was staring at my ex-girlfriend’s crotch. “I know you hate me, but I wanted you to know how appreciative I am of living here with you two.” She was speaking quietly.
“I don’t hate you.” I replied in the same quiet tone. I had good reason to hate her though, with every ounce of my being. I was hopelessly in love with her once. Not too long ago, or maybe a lifetime ago, she had dumped me. To top it off, her new boyfriend and his buddies gave me a harsh beating, my house was vandalized, my Facebook page was filled with cruel comments, and she had some critical remarks of her own to say about me. It was not a good moment in my life. And then, the crazy pandemic set in, society collapsed, and our lives were turned upside down.
Months later, we had a confrontation with some unpleasant individuals and I had been shot. Fred and Julie were rushing me home when they happened upon Macie. She was alone, pregnant, and walking aimlessly down the road with nothing more than a suitcase for company. They took her in. If I had been the one driving, I doubted I would have stopped. She was still looking at me. I sighed.
“You hurt me badly. But I don’t hate you.” She started to speak. I held up a hand. “I believe I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we should talk this out, resolve our differences, forgive and move forward, all of that daytime television bullshit. Don’t bother, I’m not interested.” I started to resume my ignoring of her, but decided to say something else.
“Why haven’t you ever asked me how Jason died?” I asked.
She looked at me stoically. “Julie told me what happened. I understand why you did it.”
I started to shake my head. Julie had not witnessed it. All she knew about it was what I had told her, and I had glossed over a few of the details. I opted not to go into it. “Julie and you have become friends. I’m happy for that. One day, perhaps you’ll catch me looking at you and I’ll smile. I can’t say it will ever happen though, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to force the issue.”
Macie looked at me a long moment before she spoke. “I understand Zach.” She pushed herself off of the couch and stood. “I think I’ll get breakfast started.” She started to say something else, decided against it, and walked into the kitchen. She returned a moment later and refilled my coffee mug. It was a nice ge
sture, but I needed some space, so I stepped outside. It was getting light out now. I sat in one of the rocking chairs and continued reading.
We poked and prodded at various parts of the brain. We would be rewarded with the test subject displaying various muscle spasms or tics. The test subject would moan in a queer way, but never spoke or screamed. I must admit, we should not have smoked any weed before conducting this particular experiment, but we did. We got a little carried away with the poking and prodding. At one point, we accidentally lacerated a section of the brain. A strange black colored goo started oozing out. This seemed to amuse Sherry. She giggled as she made additional lacerations. The test subject died approximately fifteen minutes later.
I hung one of them by the neck. I left it hanging for three days. It would sense us when we were near and its face would contort in - primal anger(?) I hung another one by his feet. Same results, although the subject’s face turned a dark color as a result of the strange fluids settling.
Two days after dissecting the test subject’s brain, I awakened to the sound of gunfire. Sherry had started shooting all of the infected inmates, and even shot Dante, the uninfected inmate. I watched from the control room. I did not try to intervene. She had a strange look on her face, and to be honest, I was concerned she might try to shoot me as well. When she killed the last one, she looked up at me as I watched her through the thick glass. The expression on her face was - frightening. It was not the Sherry I knew. I sat in the control room the rest of the day contemplating what to do. Occasionally, I looked out at Sherry. She stood in the middle of the day room, unmoving.
Z14 (Zombie Rules) Page 4