Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (73 page)

I sure hope that I find water soon.  

Sunday, September 19

Holy crap! It is freezing cold. It feels like somebody threw a giant switch. Normally it gets cold at night, but today it never felt like it warmed up at all.

I’ve passed all these so-called National and State parks. R
eally? They just seem like dead volcanoes. Some of the distant hills and mountains look like they got dusted with powdered sugar overnight.

There are lots of trenches and gullies carved into the earth around these parts, but not a drop of water that I could see or hear. I am checking any and all abandoned vehicles that I passed, but so far…nothing.

I’m too far out in the middle of nowhere to turn around. All I can do is press on and pray that I find water soon. Being extra careful, I’ll be down to my last canteen by the end of tomorrow.

Monday, September 20

Damn.

I’m trapped on the second floor of the Esmeralda County Courthouse in a town called Goldfield. Using the word ‘town’ might be stretching things just a bit.

This place doesn’t even qualify as a pencil dot on a map. It seems more like it was left in tribute or something to miners of the old days. There couldn’t have been as many people living here as there are zombies on the street. The biggest problem is that I didn’t see where they came from. I ducked inside this big, brick building looking for water, next thing I know, the streets were crawling with the undead. There weren’t even any inside when I arrived! That is what has me so confused.

I’d already checked out what passed as an airstrip at the north end of town and made my way through a few residences. I went in to check out the courthouse which has no windows left on the ground floor—but all of them still in place upstairs. That’s when things went wrong.

I heard the crash of something heavy and metallic hitting the ground. Hurrying up the stairs, I looked out the window and was stunned. Hundreds of those things were on the street. They weren’t focused on any one building—several were pouring inside mine and I quickly barred and braced the emergency exit—but the largest number converged on this four-story building up the road a ways.

The thing is, I keep hearing something. At first it took me a while to recognize what I am certain is conversation. There are others in this town. Living, breathing, talking people.

I’m left wondering if it is these people that brought the zombies. Perhaps they were on the run from a herd. The only problem with that possibility is that anybody that has survived for this long knows not to run someplace and trap yourself with those things on your tail. Zombies don’t get bored and will stay outside, clawing at your doors and walls until something comes along to distract them and lead them away. Even then, if it is a big herd like this one, (I’m guessing it at well over a thousand) then you can’t be sure that all of them will leave. The only way to survive a herd is to lead them on a wild goose chase and lose them as soon as possible.

Since the zombies seemed to be clustered to various d
egrees around every building in town, I’m not entirely certain what happened. All I know right now is that there are a frightening number clawing at the two doors that would allow access to this floor. If I get any sleep tonight it will be a miracle.

Tuesday, September 21

I don’t know who they are, but I hate them. It’s a large group; of that much I am certain. Most can’t be out of their teens yet. It’s a mix of boys and girls from what I can see, and there doesn’t seem to be one main leader.

This bunch has a real
Lord of the Flies
nature about them. On multiple occasions I saw them fighting each other as viciously as they do the zombies. I don’t have a clue as to how these idiots have survived this long. I even witnessed a pair of very pregnant girls—the older one was
maybe
fifteen—go at each other with knives.

Twice they tried to gain my building. Once they even made it to the second floor and tried to get in. I’ve become very prof
icient at setting a barricade these past couple of years. They gave up when traffic got too heavy.

I’ve heard a few of
those
screams. Once, I even saw a boy tossed out from a window into the waiting mob below.

The boys and the girls seem to be almost primal with their urges. I’ve looked out a few times to see a boy just run up b
ehind a girl and yank her pants down while she looked out a window or over the edge of a roof. But nothing blew me away more than when I saw a girl tackle a boy, roll him onto his back, and straddle him at knifepoint. This group seems to have no filters whatsoever.

I hope they don’t get any sort of clarity any time soon and mount an assault on my position. I have no doubts as to the chances of my survival. What I need is to get the hell out of here.

Friday, September 24

I’m where a lot of people always thought I would end up: a brothel. This is the first compound of survivors that I have found that isn’t fenced and fortified. Stranger still, this place is a
functioning
brothel.

Let me correct myself. There is some fortification; all of the doors and windows are barred, and the gun turrets on the roof are iron-plated. But that’s it. According to Jasmine, the house madam, that’s all they need. There are concrete pill-boxes set up two miles out and spaced at five hundred yard intervals around this place. They rely on Morse code and flags to indicate when there are approaching parties, whether they are li
ving or undead, and in what numbers. It’s primitive, but it seems to work.

Besides the madam and her dozen working girls, there are three hundred soldiers here. They weren’t from either fa
ction that fought over Vegas, but they are aware of them. I doubt they’ll have any problem though. This is the largest concentration of weapons I’ve see yet. They have the building that once functioned as the truck stop packed from floor-to-ceiling with ammo, RPGs and all sorts of stuff.

The head honcho of the soldiers, Eddie Scott, said that they’ve held meetings with some of the leaders from Las Vegas and there’s no concern that an attack will be coming. When I asked about the apparent issue b
etween the folks at Winnemucca and Las Vegas, Eddie said that their beef was an issue between the two unit commanders that spilled over to the men. His group came from Colorado, and has been here for just over a year.

I asked about civilian traffic and he said that I was the first they’d seen in two months. Then I me
ntioned that pack of feral children. He said that they lost a few men to them last winter. Supposedly, one of the young girls lured a patrol into a secured place. He was sketchy on the details, but I got the idea that it had been very ugly.  With what I witnessed, I can only imagine; and even then, I’m probably coming up short.

He asked how I managed to escape a town full of them
and
zombies. It turned out to be no big feat. The kids apparently grew bored with whatever twisted games they were playing and went on a rampage. And even then, that was some sort of game. They were intentionally beheading the zombies so that they would remain animated. Then they strung the heads from poles, stuck them on fence posts, and all sorts of varieties on that theme.

It was during this event that I made my break for it. I had to take out a few zombies on the way, but I knew that I had to get out of town before they brought their attention back to my buil
ding, and more specifically, my locked door. I’m really glad that I didn’t encounter any of those kids on my way out. I don’t know if I would have just been able to kill yet another living being—much less a child—unless they did something first. And my guess is that by then it would have been too late.

This place runs like clockwork. The men and women come and go as they start their shifts. I guess the brothel only had eight girls to start, but a few of the soldiers opted out of the military unit and went to work for Jasmine. It all seems a bit su
rreal, but this is the world that we live in. Goods and luxuries are the currency of today. The soldiers bring in the goods, and the girls provide the luxuries.

I did the math in my head, and if my guess of two hundred and twenty-ish is close when it comes to how many men are in this group, I figure those twelve ‘working girls’ are getting ri
dden twice a day every day if each guy only gets one turn per week. And I’m thinking my guess may be conservative because the six bedrooms are in use around the clock.

Fun fact: each one of the girls is sterile. Three of them were before; I guess the others had a procedure done by the comp
any’s medic. Additionally, almost two dozen of the men were forbidden contact with all but one of the women—one of the female soldiers it turns out—because of STDs. The woman in question is infected with something, none of my business. She is also the only one that is required to use condoms with every customer.

Here’s where it gets a little stranger. The men restricted to her have made runs as far away as Salt Lake City to bring back hundreds of thousands of condoms. I’m no expert, but I know those things have a shelf life. I wonder what happens when those things either go bad or they finally run out. The whole thing is a bit dark and creepy if you ask me, but it is a r
eminder of what we are as a species…pleasure seekers. When it comes down to it, we want to feel good.

I asked about the women in the company. It seems that they are all encouraged to “play the field.” I don’t see anything good coming from that. We are also a possessive species, one day, someone’s going to snap.

There are seven children here between the ages of a couple of months to what I am guessing to be about a nine-month-old. They really take the ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ adage to heart in this place. There is an RV that is used as the nursery, and it appears that everybody rotates through just like a watch shift to care for the children. I’ve never lived in a commune, but I imagine that this is what it would look like.

These folks hunt, fish—although I have no idea where—and even grow stuff. They didn’t tell me where the greenhouses were, only that they have some constructed in the hills. There are windmills set up all over the place, but none of it is used to po
wer lights. When night falls, this whole facility goes into blackout mode. Nothing more than fire pits provide lights after sunset.

I’ll stay here a couple of days. I offered to go out with the hunting group, and in exchange I am getting a water pack. It’s like a backpack but it holds water. The drawback is that I will have to fill it with my canteens because it doesn’t have any fi
ltration device. Which reminds me, I’m down to my last two changeable filters for my canteens. I really need to reach a bigger town and hope they have some sort of sporting goods store and hope further still that they haven’t been completely looted. The filling time on this pack if I use my canteens would be most of a day, and that would also mean that I would be lugging about sixty-four pounds on my back. The more likely scenario would be filling it a little over half way and keeping my canteens full. Honestly, I don’t short change myself, but I can’t see me toting almost seventy pounds on my back for any length of time.

Saturday, September 25

Left this morning to go up into the hills and hunt. I sure wish I could bring this rifle with me when I leave, but I’ve been told that there is absolutely no way that will happen.

I spent the early part of the afternoon on this rocky outcro
pping. I bagged a nice buck. Being the owner of the first kill was a little source of pride for me. I think a few of the guys—and even the one female soldier—were impressed.

Everywhere I look it is brown. The ground is brown, the plants are brown, and I think this place is starting to get to me. All I want to do is to get moving again. Once I reach Vegas, if I sign on to be a caravan escort, l like I am hoping to, I’d like to do some traveling that takes me into places with a little more color. However, I can’t knock the sunsets out here. They’re i
ncredible.

Tuesday, September 28

Back to what I’ve titled Brothel Base.

I leave tomorrow. Oh yeah! And I’ll have company. Her name is Justine Cash and she has family that is rumored to still be alive in Las Vegas.

I guess it will be nice to have somebody to talk to. She was one of the soldiers. Apparently, while I was on the hunting trip, a team returned from some sort of mission to Beatty, a town about thirty-five to forty-five miles south of here. They ran into a team from someplace called Pahrump. So, based on third or fourth hand information, Justine is heading for Vegas by way of Beatty. Since they knew I was headed that way already, Eddie, the commander or whatever he is—everyone just calls him Eddie, nobody uses rank or anything like that around here—asked Justine to wait. I guess the idea is safety in numbers or something like that.

Wednesday, September 29

On the road. Absolutely nothing to see.