Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (20 page)

Sunday, May 11

Making our way back is easier, but slower. Brittany Maldanado is obviously these kids’ leader. Even when Steve and I say something, they look to her for a nod of approval. About half of them won’t talk to us at all. I don’t blame them. I mean really...this world is ugly and messy.

There are a lot of things I don’t miss...Amber Alerts, the most recent teacher-student sex scandal, another dead priest b
eing accused of fondling his altar boy, and which idiotic Hollywood bimbo lacking any talent or actual contributing skill was seen getting out of her car in a mini-skirt and “accidentally” forgetting her panties. I truly believe that, in some ways, these children are living in a better world.

What does that say about the world that used to be?

Monday, May 12

Made contact with Meredith and the others. It was great to hear her voice. Scott and Sasha have not called in yet. That is only a minor concern since both of those kids are little wannabe-action-figures. The downside is that it looks like we’ll have to hike the whole way back. We can’t have them returning to find everybody gone. I just hope they’ve reported in by the time St
eve and I make it back. I wouldn’t want to sit too long.

Tuesday, May 13

Tucked all the kids in. They are in huddled little puppy piles in each of the Hummers. Nothing at all has come over the radio. Meredith and I are under one of the vehicles. It’s not quite camping, but the clean air is refreshing and very conducive to nestling in nice and close.

It was great to wrap Meredith in my arms and just feel her close. The kids seemed relieved when they saw the rest of our group. It was like they held some doubt and feared we may be leading them to someplace (like what my Meredith escaped from) terrible.

On the bad side, still nothing from Scott or Sasha. We wait one more day, then if still nothing, Meredith and Perry will go look for them. Initially, I said I would go, but Perry argued that since Steve and I had already made a hike, we should stay put and let him do something productive. Meredith piled on in agreement.

Wednesday, May 14

Meredith left this morning. Already it is obvious that Steve and I had gone in the easier direction of the two. Perry has been frantic at times on the radio. Between the terrain and unusually frequent zombie appearances, both he and Meredith have expressed wonder that Scott and Sasha communicated so infrequently.

The unspoken tone from both sides is that we fully e
xpect not to find our friends. If we do, we meaning Meredith and Perry since I’m watching over a bunch of kids, it will likely be just to put a bullet in their heads.

Thursday, May 15

Lost radio contact early today. To add to the misery, a storm is steadily dumping water on us, and some zombie activity here in the middle of nowhere got the kids all shook up, which is making for a miserable day. I already told Perry that they should not search more than a few hours once we lose contact. If they find nothing, it will be sad, but we can move out with a clear conscience. And really…that is all this little exercise is about.

The real focus needs to be moving on, scouting the obje
ctive, and getting back to Irony. Not that I think there is a high possibility of danger to the folks back at Irony. At least not from the zombies. My bigger worry was, and always has been, the danger posed by other survivors.  Most notably in this situation, the folks from the Air Force base.

I spent a little time chatting with Brittany Maldanado t
oday away from the others. For seventeen, she has her head screwed on tight. She can’t be much taller than five feet and I would guess her to have about a hundred and seventy pounds packed on. She keeps her waist length hair braided and coiled on top of her head like a black python.

It is not hard to imagine that she was one of those girls that never gave a flat damn about what anybody thought of her. She is a take-it-or-leave-it sorta gal. I wonder how many of the little cheerleader types that pointed and laughed behind her back are stumbling around with bites out of ‘em, condemned to an eternity of vacuousness that barely exceeds what they exhibited when alive.

Anyways, Brittany said that about three weeks ago there was a loud noise that took everybody a while to realize was aircraft. They ran to a clear area just in time to see at least seven jets battling each other in the sky above. At least four were eventually shot down, but it was unclear who was fighting who since all of the planes looked the same. One of the boys, Henry Mills, kept insisting at the time that they were all American. Apparently he was a fighter plane aficionado. Unfortunately, he was one of the kids we put down with the biker-zombies.

Still, it was good to get a sense of this kid. She is obv
iously the heart of the group. If we hope to make any in-roads with the others, she is our avenue. I told her a little about Irony and how things work. I explained why we were out here scouting and she understood everything perfectly.

It was after we’d been talking for a while that she e
xposed the hesitation in the others. The last adult to succumb to the disease had managed to tie up all the boys the first night he had been the final adult. Then, once he had all the girls isolated in one room—he used the pretense that the boys had gotten infected and they had to separate themselves—he came in with intentions of having his way with one of the girls; Marissa Blaney, a fourteen- year-old little gal that had been “cursed” with an older girl’s body, big blue eyes and blonde hair. He had the girl pinned to the bed when Brittany crushed the back of his head with a shovel.

Like I said, she has it all together.

Friday, May 16

We are in the Hummers and on a gravel road that, come tomorrow, will take us to a bridge that crosses the river. The rain splattering with a metallic buzz on the roof is mind numbing. All of us need a little mental Novocain right now.

Perry is a wreck. But then, he’s the one who found Scott and Sasha. To his credit, he held firm in his refusal in allowing Meredith to see them. When they got back this evening he took me aside and told me everything.

Scott obviously put up quite a fight. Perry said that he was chained to a tree and showed signs of having been sliced a couple hundred times. Eventually, whoever these sick bastards were turned a zombie loose on him, but only enough for him to suffer. He had one bite on his left hand. The size of the bite ind
icated that it was a child.

Sasha likely witnessed it all. Just as Scott probably wi
tnessed the multiple times she was raped only a few feet away…staked to the ground. Even through the discoloration of death, Perry said it was obvious she had been badly abused. Her inner thighs were almost black with bruising, and blood was caked almost to her knees. I didn’t ask what he did to discover it, but he said it was apparent that she had been anally raped repeatedly as well. All of her teeth had been pulled from her mouth. Perry couldn’t be sure if this was done before or after the animals that did this allowed her to be turned. Their finishing touch was to cut her head off and shove it into her ripped open abdomen so that her face stared out. This was particularly unnerving since, while the body did not move, the head was fully animated.

One oddity Perry observed—besides all the obvious—was how agitated the Scott-zombie got when the Sasha-zombie was disposed of. Perry says that he now wishes he would’ve killed the Scott-zombie first.

I used to watch movies like
The Road Warrior
and think that surely we would not devolve so drastically as a species in the event of an actual apocalypse.

It seems I was terribly, terribly wrong.

Saturday, May 17

Found the compound. I’m not surprised that folks were retreating from society. Actually, and this may be the shock tal
king, I’m now wondering why more folks weren’t doing it.

We’ve watched all day for any signs of movement. There is nothing living or dead down there. We will respect Grace’s request that we simply scout and then return. There are a couple of populations outside of those small bergs of society.

First thing in the morning we will head back to Irony. For some reason…I’ve been thinking a lot about the folks back at the old compound: Tom Langston, Monica Campinelli, Greg Parker, and Crystal Johnson. I hope they are all okay. Would it have been better if I had stayed there…oblivious to what is becoming of our world?

Evening

Nobody spoke much today. I think grief, shock, and horror are all accepted parts of the life we now live. Still, sometimes something happens that takes just a bit longer to digest. While only Perry actually saw Scott and Sasha, everybody knows enough to be shaken. This is an event best left behind.  Yet, we cannot do that because it is of the utmost importance that everybody be vigilant for the dangers in this new world. After all, it was our society as a whole that tried to dispel this last and most horrible crisis by ignoring it and keeping the community in the dark about just what was out there on the streets of their neighborhoods.

I do still believe there are good people out there. Only, you never see their handiwork. It is in our nature to try and allow the bad to define us. We lived in a world where mistakes and wrongdoings were news, and do-gooders were ignored if not mocked. Or worse, suspected of ulterior motives. Think back…at the end of a newscast, sometimes you could hear a st
ory about the person finding an envelope of cash or a bank bag that fell out of a truck. How often did it spark the conversation on how big of an idiot that person was? We wanted addicted Hollywood stars behaving badly…politicians and theology figures in sex scandals…athletes on steroids.

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio indeed.

Sunday, May 18

Terrible thunder and lightning started early this afte
rnoon. Driving over terrain that has now undergone almost a half year of neglect…or reclamation by Mother Nature if you want to see it that way…caused us to become just a little bit lost. Unable to see as the rain became worse, we stopped to wait out the storm.

We had no idea we were just outside of a town called Pritchard. The close quarters with so many of us stuffed into th
ese vehicles led to some squabbles. One of the boys, Randy Smythe, a fourteen-year-old, started picking on a couple of the girls. Steve Morgan attempted to settle things down which prompted Randy to start yelling about how nobody was his boss. At some point, the kid punched Steve in the nose. Now Steve is bleeding, everybody is yelling and young Randy wriggled and squirmed until he got to a door, opened it, and took off in the rain.

While Meredith and I were trying to settle everybody down, Brittany took off after Randy.  Then, Steve took off after Brittany. The kids were almost settled down when suddenly Pe
rry is at our vehicle pounding on the window. I opened the door and could hear screaming. It was a familiar scream, one of pure agony. The sort you hear when somebody is being eaten alive.

I got out and told everybody to stay put. It was an odd thought now that I look back. Strangely enough, the scream had shut everybody up and not even Meredith argued as I ran after the direction of the now dying—no pun intended—screams.

Perry and I had to slog through this ankle-deep muck that had washed over what used to be the main road into town. We had to round this long gradual bend with tall pines lining either side.

We came around the corner and almost fell over one a
nother trying to stop. Perry and I each had a pistol on our hip, but that was not going to help much. More than a hundred zombies were, at furthest, eighty feet, and at closest, less than twenty feet away.

Brittany had Randy by the hand, trying desperately to pull him from a zombified construction worker wearing the ta
ttered remains of a flannel shirt and jeans along with a now-empty tool-belt. Randy was jerking and screaming, doing all he could to elude the gnashing teeth of his attacker.

However, it was Steve who had been the source of the screams. He—or what was left of him—was under a pack of no less than twenty of those things. Like famished piglets to the be
lly of a sow, zombies jostled for position as they ripped away glistening crimson globules from his gaping abdomen. One of his arms had been ripped free and was now caught in an obscene tug-of-war between two undead children of about ten years old. Worse, Steve was still gasping, fighting death for as many seconds as he could. I did not hesitate as I drew my .45 and extended my arm. The last thing I saw from him was a moment of clarity where his eyes conveyed the thanks his mouth failed to as a gout of blood exploded from his lips.

The shot echoed, and every zombie seemed to suddenly realize that Perry and I were there as every head snapped our d
irection. The best thing about that was the one trying to eat Randy let go sending both him and Brittany falling backwards into the muddy ditch nearby.