“How the hell are we going to get past all this mess?” Christina asked as she looked out the windshield at the blockade ahead of us with dread.
“Last time Chaz used a bulldozer and cleared the road.” Noah answered with a grin as we all got out and looked ahead at the mess.
“Yeah…but there isn’t any bulldozer around here this time.” I answered as I smiled remembering how easy it had once been compared to what it had become.
“Why don’t we just take our truck and just plow right through this mess?” Destiny asked as she leaned against the truck.
“That might mess up the front end too bad.” I answered in a technical tone.
We were all alerted by a sudden noise and there to our horror was the Entity busting out of a nearby cluster of trees; it looked to have mutated even more since the last time we had seen it and we could now tell that it was a rocket launcher embedded in its left limb.
“Strap yourselves in everyone!” I shouted hustling all the others into their seats before sitting down with Angie, Jennifer and our children.
“Get us out of here dude!” Melvin shouted as he sealed the small side windows shut.
There was a loud explosion behind us and when we strained to look we seen that one of the wrecked cars near the back of our truck had been hit by a missile from the things’ rocket launcher.
“Brace for the impact!” I shouted as I threw my arms around Angie and Jennifer as she held onto Ember while Remy and Mace stood next to us.
We got to the floor, as a rocket propelled grenade no doubt struck the back of our truck’s trailer and the vehicle shook only slightly and the lights dimmed for only a second.
“I told you that we’d be safe in here—Noah, get us the hell out of here!” I shouted as I got to my feet helping Angie with Remy, Mace and our newborn daughter as Jennifer clung to us tightly.
Noah put his foot to the pedal and sped through the wrecked cars plowing into them and knocking them out of the way; we could all hear the scrapping metal but most of it was the vehicles that we were hitting. After that, we had cleared the wreckage and we sped away from the scene leaving the Entity well behind.
“You know—I bet that damn thing put those wrecked cars out there as sort of a trap for us!” Kira stated looking out the window toward where we had just been.
“It’s possible I guess, that just goes to prove that it is indeed following us—I think that our plan to lure it to the nuclear plant and trap it there just might work.” I answered as I sat down in my seat trying to relax my frazzled nerves.
We traveled on at a speed of around 75mph doing our best to avoid the occasional and sometimes constant wrecked vehicles that were in the road and by nightfall of that same day, we were passing through the capital city of Topeka and getting on interstate 70 headed east toward Kansas City. That is when Christina who was also pregnant started going into labor; the others took care of her and she gave birth to a baby boy after a few hours of labor. They named him Laurence—Noah had already drove for quite a distance, so I took over driving and Angie sat in the passenger’s seat beside of me with Remy and Mace close by and Ember in her lap while Jennifer sat directly behind me and got as close to me as she could; I avoided stops as we had plenty of fuel and food in the trailer behind us as well as ammo that was practically piled up in crates in the back as well. The trailer seemed to make good sleeping quarters and most of the others were back there sleeping, it wasn’t until sometime after 1am when we were finally getting close to Kansas City; Angie was getting tired so she used her jacket for a pillow and put her seat back and went to sleep as I drove on and soon through the zombie infested Kansas City.
“Damn bastards…the others are probably lucky that they’re not awake to see this.” I thought to myself as I witnessed some of the most sickening sights since the whole mess had begun.
Zombies were everywhere—eating corpses of people who had no doubt died not long before; there would be an zombie every now and then that would hobble out into the street and pound on the side of our truck, but the night’s cover seemed to keep the majority of them from getting in my way too much. I noticed buildings burning and somewhere not far off I could hear store alarms blaring—obviously due to the undead breaking through; I found the exit where interstate 70 continued through Missouri. Most of the entire way I wasn’t paying too much attention to the small towns we passed by and through; before long I started noticing signs saying so many miles to St. Luis. It was almost dawn and I was just about to fall asleep when Melvin came up and offered to drive, so I gave him instructions from the road atlas we had been using and then Angie, Jennifer and I went back to the trailer and got a few hours of sleep before being woken up sometime after 1pm later that same day. We got up and went back into the cab where Melvin was still driving while drinking coffee out of a thermos, it looked like we were going through the boonies and most of the roadway we passed was littered with wrecked vehicles and even the occasional semi.
“Where are we?” I asked as I knelt down in the middle of his seat and the passenger seat.
“Just passed some place called Caruthersville.” Melvin answered as he stared ahead at the road.
I looked at the atlas and then looked back at him in amazement. “Dude—we’re almost in Tennessee, how the hell did you ever manage to make it this far?” I asked with a surprised look.
“I just hauled ass—didn’t waste any time with St. Luis because it was crawling with those undead assholes, so I just found the exit to get on interstate 55 and didn’t even look back.” Melvin answered with a grin.
“Yeah, not to mention the fact that you were cruising at 110mph.” Noah added as he glanced at me slightly shaking his head.
“Damn dude—be careful, we don’t want to wreck this thing.” I scolded.
Christina was taking care of her newborn when she noticed that something was wrong with him, Yvonne who had two kids of her own helped her out by checking the infant’s vital signs; apparently the baby was sick with some kind of illness and it didn’t look too good for him. Yvonne advised that he be kept in the bathroom toward the back of the trailer with Christina who refused to leave him—sometime later Angie, Jennifer and I heard Christina crying and we heard her tell Noah that their baby had died; Noah done his best to comfort her and she ended up crying herself to sleep. Soon we passed over the Tennessee state line and then we got onto a smaller road labeled the 412 and headed southeast, I stopped near a field for a few minutes so Noah and Christina could bury their child and have a few minutes of silence before we all got back into the truck and continued. Most of the trip through Tennessee was boring and uneventful—before we hardly even knew it, we were only 40 miles west of Chattanooga.
“Well—we’re almost there; the Entity can’t be far behind us.” Noah stated as he stuck his head out of the driver’s side window briefly.
“Yeah—next thing is finding the damn place…I think that it’s probably on the eastern shore of the Chickamauga Lake.” I answered as I frowned in deep thought.
I took over driving while Melvin went to eat and get some sleep, I was sure that the Entity wasn’t far behind us because it had been trailing us the entire way and I wanted to get to the nuclear power plant as soon as possible. Around 8:45pm I passed through and left Chattanooga going northeast; using information brochures we had picked up from city hall when we stopped to check for fuel for our truck—we had ended up finding a station with a working generator and we used that to replace the diesel fuel in the lab truck’s tank that we had used which turned out to be around half of it and we were able to locate and pinpoint the nuclear power plant’s exact location. We were almost there when a missile suddenly came down out of the sky from behind us and hit a billboard awfully close to us—looking back we seen that it was the Entity and it was descending out of the low hanging rain clouds and coming our way. We pulled into the lot smashing through the gate to the nu
clear power plant just in time and I parked our truck in a spot where it would be easy for us to escape from, everyone ran inside the side door to the plant as I watched the Entity high above us as it landed on the edge of one of the high cooling towers; it then disappeared as it went down inside of it.
“This is it guys—the Entity just went down into one of the cooling towers, if we can find a way to seal the both of them shut—the damn thing will be trapped in there and we can set a bomb and get the hell out of here.” I shouted as I entered the front entrance room where everyone was waiting.
[Chapter Five: The Escape]
We had went into the nuclear power plant not long before and were now about to carry out our plan to destroy the Entity once and for all.
“How are we going to seal the cooling towers shut and trap that damn thing?” Melvin asked as we made our way through the structure aware that we had to be very careful.
“Hey—not so damn fast!” I scolded as Donnie pushed past me with his pistol in his hand.
No more had I said that when there was a sudden crash from above—there coming out of the interior was the Entity; I hustled everyone back into the room we had just came through which was some sort of control room as Noah and Jennifer were trying to seal the door shut.
Donnie opened fire on the Entity not even hitting it—his bullets were ricocheting off the steel pipes and other metal surfaces and one even came back and nearly hit me.
“You stupid motherfucker—learn to shoot!”
“Get your fat ass over here now!” I shouted angrily letting little droplets of spit fly.
He was coming back toward the door when suddenly the same liquid spittle the Entity had used to kill James, Alex and the others when it had first been released poured down on Donnie melting his flesh off his bones; my sister shouted and cried out his name as I stepped through the door as the others almost had it sealed. Jennifer shut the doors and turned toward me when all of a sudden the Entity’s lance like tail came right through the small crack of the doors and nearly impaled Jennifer who skillfully dodged the poisoned barbed point of the tail; she however wasn’t fast enough to completely get out of the way and was slashed moderately across her chest just below her left breast.
“No!”
“Are you alright?” I shouted in anger and disbelief as I grabbed Jennifer and pulled her to safety.
“I’ll live…I hope—I’m not ready to leave you and Angie.” Jennifer answered as she used a piece of cloth from her shirt to try and stop the bleeding.
Noah hit the door controls once making the doors start to open and then he hit them again causing sparks to fly—the door closed shut fast just as the Entity was starting to pull its tail back through the doors—it wasn’t fast enough though and the doors closed and severed the tip of its tail off.
“How bad is the bleeding?” I asked turning to Jennifer with a concerned glance.
“It’s not too bad…Chaz…baby if the time comes when I start to turn into one of those things promise me that you’ll release me by putting a bullet in my head.” Jennifer answered with a worried expression as she hung her head.
“It won’t come to that—I won’t let it…let’s just focus on getting done what needs to be done and getting the hell out of here.” I answered as I briefly took hold of her right hand and squeezed it.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Angie asked in a frantic tone as she watched the Entity thrash about in the next room.
“Let me try something…” I stated as I went to the controls and typed in some keys.
No more had I done so when a work arm came around and slammed into the Entity startling it—this also drew its attention to where we were, which wasn’t a good thing; it started toward us and was just about to the glass when I used the work arm’s claw and snared it in a death grip where all it could do was roar in anger and thrash around in midair.
“Hot damn—looks like we’ve got the damn thing trapped!” Melvin shouted giving Noah a high-five.
“Party’s not over yet guys—let’s do what we came here to do, let’s set a bomb and get the hell away.” I stated as I slung my M16 over my right shoulder.
“Right—we’ll go back and get the explosives.” Noah stated as he, Christina and a few of the others went back out to our truck to get the supplies while the rest of us waited making sure the Entity didn’t escape as well as staying out of its view.
It took around five minutes for them to get back to where we were and we used a manual we had picked up in the weapons storage bunker at the military compound on how to rig together the bomb; after we got it finished I took the bomb opening a nearby valve with the nuclear symbol that was connected to large pipes leading to the nuclear reactor and planted the bomb inside of it and we all fell back. The rest of us were out of the control room, but Rachel was lagging—I looked back and shouted for her to come on; that’s when I saw the Entity had seen her and it aimed the rocket launcher it had on its left limb right at her and fired.
“Look out!” I shouted, but I was too late.
The rocket punched through the window glass and exploded sending out a fire cloud that consumed her; I just barely shut and sealed the steel door closed in time as the blast sent me to the floor.
“Chaz are you okay baby?” Angie asked as she and Jennifer came running to me.
“Yeah, but Rachel is dead…the bomb is still okay—the explosion must have been too small to effect it—let’s just get the hell out of here!” I shouted taking her by the hand and leading the way toward the exit just behind the others.
We got back outside and into the truck, Noah was in the driver’s seat and we were leaving the lot and getting back onto the highway going south.
“How do we activate the bomb?” Christina asked as she looked from Noah to me.
“It’s set on a timer…damn it…we’ve got six minutes left—we better step on it!” I answered as I glanced at the watch I wore on my left arm.
“Will the explosion be nuclear?” My mom asked in a worried voice.
“I’m not sure…but it should be enough to release enough radiation to kill the bastard.” I answered with a hopeful grin.
“Kind of like a nuclear meltdown.” Kira added as she gazed out the side window.
Several long minutes had passed and we were now what seemed like miles away from the nuclear power plant.
“How far do we need to get from that plant?” Noah asked as we were now leaving Chattanooga and going through Rossville.
“At least 20 miles…get us to Fort Oglethorpe and fast—we’ve only got 3 and a half minutes left.” I answered as I once again glanced at my watch.
Noah stepped on it and sped on down the street passing ruined and wrecked cars in almost a blur, within the next half minute we were well past Fort Oglethorpe and going through the Chickamauga Battlefield.
“40 seconds until detonation…let’s just hope that damn thing is still where we left it.” I said as I wrapped my arms around Angie and Jennifer.
Just at that moment back at the nuclear power plant, the Entity started to break free and was heading toward the busted out window to follow; we were just passing the BP gas station in the small community of Chickamauga when there was a bright flash from behind us—Noah covered his eyes and stomped on the break bringing us to a stop. The ground trembled somewhat and looking back a few minutes later we could see a mushroom cloud.
“Damn…that must have been a thermal nuclear explosion…I doubt that there will be any life in that area for the next decade.” I stated as I looked back at the mushroom cloud and the birds and other animal life that fled from out of the woods nearby.
“Well—we did it didn’t we?”
“We killed the dirty bastard.” Cedric stated hugging his wife Sally and some of the others.
“Yeah—there’s no way in hell that thing could have survived that.
Let’s go to my old house and see what kind of shape it’s in—now that the Entity is dead, we can let the guard down at least one level.” I said as I exchanged places with Noah with Angie in the seat beside of me, I drove on towards Lafayette, Georgia where our old house was just nine miles to the south.
After driving the rest of the day and dodging around wrecked vehicles that were in the road, we arrived at our old place. Everything still pretty much looked the same, the patio was still standing and so was my grandmother’s house; we parked the truck beside of it and everyone got out with their weapons ready.
“Damn is it ever great to be back here…scout around everyone, make sure that there aren’t any zombies or anything lurking around; patrol by threes and watch your backs.” I instructed as everyone spread out and scouted around the house as Angie, Jennifer and I went down to my house to see what sort of shape things were in.
[HGB] Humanity Gone Bad: The Dead Chronicles Page 18