Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (57 page)

By the time I got up, Eric was engaged with three of those things. I fumbled around and managed to scoop up one of my scimitars just as the first one reached me. Since it is imposs
ible to backpedal in the harness, I hit the quick-release and tossed the harness into the cart. Eric was already disappearing back through the trees we’d just come through. We both know that in situations like this, it is every man or woman for themselves. No hard feelings.

By the time I emerged back and beside the highway, Eric was weaving through a gap in the vehicles. He disappeared b
ehind a black pick-up truck. Sam was standing in that gap staring at me. When I almost reached him, he bolted away again. He stopped at every opening between cars and waited for me to almost catch up before taking off again. I don’t know if he was actually following Eric, or just leading me away from the oncoming horde of zombies.

We emerged about a half mile up the road. Some of the zombies managed to stay on my tail, which flustered the hell out of me. I was forced to push the cart by now, and my body was drenched with sweat.

I know that you might be wondering how I couldn’t elude the slow moving undead out in the open. First, there were all the cars. You try getting a cart to twist and turn in a space where I can barley fit it, much less turn it. I had to turn when there was room…that meant long bursts of straight ahead.

When I got to the other side of the highway, I saw Eric climbing through a ticket window of a huge theater. He had a
lready killed off a few zombies, unloaded his cart, broke his cart down, and shoved it through the box office window. Then, Eric went through the hole. He was nice enough to help me once I finally made it to him.

We didn’t have any way to block the wall of glass doors at the entrance—some of which were already broken—so we made a hasty retreat in to one of the pitch black theaters. We had to pull out one of our flashlights with the red lenses in order to see an
ything as we hurried down the aisle. We were gonna duck out back and keep running, but when we managed to force the exit door open, we found ourselves in a long—perhaps thirty feet or so—corridor. We decided that it was as good of a buffer as we were likely to find. We wedged the entry door to this particular theater shut and have decided to wait things out a while in here.

We know that there are survivors in the area. That means that it is likely that any of the zombies that have been drawn by us will eventually be drawn away by other distractions. Seriously, zo
mbies have the memory of a goldfish…at best.

The hornet’s nest we have kicked around these parts will die down. In the few hours we have been here, the pounding and other noises that go along with a zombie horde have dwindled significantly. Twice I have gone out to that corridor and li
stened at the doors at either end. It is silent. While I can’t be totally sure, I am fairly certain those doors lead outside. Probably open out to a side or rear parking lot.

Well…I’ve had enough of Eric’s dirty looks as I run down the batteries on one of our flashlights. I will stop writing for now.

Sunday, February 14

I thought we might be screwed, but we finally got out of Sandy. Well…the main part of it anyways. We are now shacked up in this really posh house outside of town. It sits at the edge of a g
igantic farm. Hard to tell what used to grow here, the military took a position on this land complete with what look like holding pens and massive trench burial sites. There are lots of blackened bones scattered around from the burning piles. (It takes a lot of heat to burn a body down to just ash. Bonfires wouldn’t be enough to do the trick.)

We are up on this hill that offers a perfect view of the hig
hway. A forest flanks us on three sides. As nice as this place is, it has been absolutely gutted. It is worse than a
Who
house after the
Grinch
picked it clean on Christmas Eve night.

We are in the rear of the place with a nice fire going in the sun
ken tub of what used to be the master bedroom. Eric nailed a few fluffy, white bunnies for us to eat.

I can’t recall being so tired in a long time. We’ve been ducking and dodging for the past thirty or so hours. It is a bles
sing to be able to lay back and relax. Plus, I doubt we’ll be moving from this spot any time soon. It’s snowing again…hard.

It has been a while since I’ve seen so many of those things sca
ttered around and lurking at every corner. Between the singles, roamers, and the always dangerous creepers under seemingly every vehicle…I’ve probably put down over two hundred of them in the past day and a half.

I kept hearing the voice of
Doctor Who
—the dreamy David Tennant version—saying, “Run!” We even had to ditch our carts for a while and go back for them. I was really glad mine didn’t get stolen by some passing survivor, and there seem to be a peculiarly high number around these parts. We just got so tangled up with fighting and evading, we had no choice.

At one point, we were hiding out in an overgrown ce
metery. I’m not sure, but I believe that there are still people out there who think that the dead will claw their way from the grave. Those people have never read
Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain
. Mouths are sewn shut, organs are removed—including the brain—and the body is pumped full of chemicals. I get that zombies are not normal…Wait. Let me rephrase that. Zombies didn’t
used
to be normal.

Nowadays,
we
are the anomaly.

Early this morning or late last night—can’t tell which—we made it back to where we’d ditched our carts. We hitched up feeling pretty safe, but made sure to lead the ones we gathered just in that short time back to the movie house. We used the woods to get to this place once we spotted it to keep any zo
mbies off our trail.

We were moving along the single-lane road that runs para
llel to the highway when the first great big snowflakes began to fall. These didn’t drift gracefully. Nope, they plummeted to earth.

The best thing about this place as opposed to a lot of the houses in the area is that it has all its doors and windows intact. So, now, a million dollar home is nothing more than a flop house for a pair of vagrants and a dog.

Monday, February 15

Wow!  There’s at least three feet of snow on the ground ou
tside. We are so totally stuck. There is absolutely no way that we can leave. It snowed all night and has been coming down steady all day. We can hang here for a while, I guess. I know that we will have to deal with snow in the mountains, but we ain’t there yet. I won’t ever say this out loud in front of Eric, but perhaps we should’ve waited one more month before heading out.

I can’t help it; I wanted to get out of that confined, mu
ndane, prison-like environment. I felt as if I were dying a slow death. I can’t explain it anymore beyond that. At least Eric hasn’t said anything. I don’t believe it matters to him one way or the other. I have to say it again; I couldn’t be making this trip with a better person.

Friday, February 20

The storm has passed and we’ve had a sunny day to enjoy…at least from inside. It is freezing out there. Still, there is this square of sunlight coming through a window that is blissful. Oh, and Eric bagged a deer. He called it a spike; I call it yummy. We have feasted the past two days.

From our position overlooking the highway, we haven’t seen much movement of any kind—zombie or otherwise. And have I mentioned the glare? It never once crossed my mind until Eric handed me these dark goggles. He thought it was amusing that I would even consider going up into the mountains with no eye protection. To my credit, I didn’t stick my tongue out at him u
ntil
after
his back was turned.

Wednesday, February 24

It was nice to be on the move again. Because of the downpour of rain the past two days, much of the snow has been washed away. There are still some mounds here and there, but the road is fairly deserted and easy to travel along.

So, about these mounds or “snow drifts” that are scattered about; some of them contain nasty surprises. I’d all but forgotten that zombie that I’d seen fall in the street and eventua
lly stop trying to stand again on the slick ice. It’d frozen in place then gotten covered with snow. Today we learned quick to avoid anything that even remotely resembles a lump, bulge, or drift.

We were passing this gigantic truck stop just after sunrise. There were dozens of rigs with names that would mean nothing to the next generation. We’d decided to poke around since we’d spo
tted a Pepsi and a Lays truck. There were a few roamers that we could see, and we considered skipping past, but Eric wanted a Pepsi.

I didn’t see too many of those things to handle and decided that it couldn’t hurt. I wasn’t going to deny my travel buddy som
ething that seemed so simple. It was when we stepped up to the rear of the trailer with the big, open cargo doors that we almost suffered a terrible loss. Eric went to kick the ice-crusted pile of snow that was kinda in the way. He didn’t expect to discover a solid center. The look on his face would’ve been funny when he tripped, if not for the zombie.

A big hand with fingers like kielbasa sausages burst from the mound and wrapped around his ankle. If that big old truc
ker—or what was left of him—still had any of his lower jaw left, there would’ve been a remarkably different outcome to that encounter. The top teeth scraped Eric’s pant leg, but didn’t get through to skin or anything like that.

I drove one of my scimitars into the side of its head and kicked it away. After catching our breath, we returned to the task we’d initially embarked on. Swinging the cargo doors the rest of the way open proved to be a huge disappointment. The roof was nothing but brown stalactites from where the Pepsi bo
ttles had burst and sprayed the ceiling.

We did find a few twenty-ouncers that hadn’t exploded, but it was an unsatisfactory haul. We also salvaged some sour cream and onion chips. After our snack break, we sat there not talking about that mound incident.

We got back on the road and passed a roadside diner that was nothing but a charred husk, but right after this dog-leg turn, we happened upon a school building. It was tiny, not even a cafeteria, and situated in a perfect place. We had a great view back the way we came for a good distance, along with a wide open look ahead.

I don’t believe in fate, luck, or divine providence. That said, we could’ve easily kept on going and pulled up at a place a mile or two up the road. I do think that we were both still a little spooked by that snowdrift incident at the rear of the Pepsi truck. Whatever the reason, we chose this place to stop for the night.

They came from the north. It started about an hour ago. Sam’s growling alerted us. Lit up by the setting sun, we can see them by the hundreds…maybe thousands: a horde.

Thursday, February 25

Got up early this morning to see the damage.

The field that they cut across was enormous. The horde emptied into the clearing across the highway. There were four houses spaced out in this area. All of them would’ve made ideal spots to stop for the night. Only one is still standing.

From what we can tell, they stomped straight through. However, when they reached the south end of the clearing, it narrows and eventually gives back over to the forest. It was probably like water hitting a barricade. There was a thin row of trees on the east “wall” of the clearing. That’s right, I said “was.”  Perhaps it was because the ground was so wet, but several of those pines were toppled like a bulldozer had gotten to them.

We didn’t stick around long. The trees and terrain acted as a di
ffuser and scattered the horde. Several pockets of them are sorta hanging out like they got lost or something. The one remaining house that is still standing is surrounded ten deep. A few houses up the road a ways have a handful swirling about. I hope there isn’t anybody trapped in any of them; not that we could do anything for them if there were.

Then, there are some houses not in the path that the horde took. These are simply on the other side of the road. Not a single zombie is in the vicinity. This is a perfect example of their si
ngle-mindedness.

The road here has a slight roll to it as we get closer to the big mountain. We crested a ridge on this particularly long, straight stretch. That is where we discovered ‘SE Paha Loop Drive.’  We followed it into the trees and discovered an old bed and brea
kfast. Thankfully, it was long since empty.

Friday, February 26

Made good distance today. Wow!  It gets noticeably colder the moment that the sun ducks behind the horizon. I’m talking face-numbing, toe-stinging, don’t-want-to-pee-because-your-hoo hoo-freezes cold!

Eric says that we are lucky. The weather, by his reckoning, is rather mild for this time of year. I told him…well…never mind what I told him. The lack of zombie problems have been r
eplaced by an eternity of pine trees coated with white, sparkling snow. It looked so pretty in pictures. Make no mistake…this sucks!