Southern Zombies Three Book Box Set: A Story of Survival, Southern Hospitality, and Southern Blood (2 page)

We get started on the street leaving our house. People are stumbling around everywhere. I must switch from one side of the street to the other just to avoid the masses of people roaming around. Even though I am looking at and seeing all this, I can’t believe it. How can a disaster like this happen? How will we survive this?

Riley and I finally get through the hordes of people lining the streets. We get to highway 6 on our drive from Tupelo to Pontotoc to get my sister Diane. Again, I try calling her. This time it goes through. The first thing I hear from her? “What the hell is going on and where are you?”

After telling her I am ok and on my way with Riley to get her, I tell her to get all the necessities together.

To give you a little background. My sister and I have a mother/daughter relationship as she was 16 years old when I was born. So she treats me like one of her kids. We also have no filters for our thoughts. What we think comes out of our mouths. And I also knew that when I told her to get necessities together, she would have a whole load of shit ready to go.

And I was right. She had packed almost everything in the house. I asked her “Where the hell is this stuff going to go?” She casually told me that she did what I told her. I said “no, I said necessities. A crock pot and a toaster oven are not necessities”.

She asked “Well how will we cook?” I asked her had she ever heard of cooking on an open fire. I got the stink eye look after that question, so I shut up.

Her son, Marc had their houses surrounded by electrical fencing. This seemed to help keep the zombies at bay, but they were still trying to get in.

I asked Marc, “Since I have a small Nissan car and your mom has packed the whole house to take, can I use your 4-wheel drive to go find Bobby?” I might as well have asked him to sign over his first born to Satan for the look I got from him.

I said come on. I can drive. I have only wrecked a car twice. He finally relented with a whole list of things I could and could not do with his truck.  A zombie apocalypse is going on and he is worried about his truck.

So while we loaded the supplies up, Marc gave us guns and ammo, knives and other weapons we could use if we needed to. He and his son Trey were going to stay behind and keep the homes fortified and protected. Looking around, I see Trey is riding around in the yard on his Honda Pioneer shooting zombies. I see some people are having more fun than others during this.

The next thing I hear is my sister yelling, “The electricity just went off.” 

“You don’t say! I was wondering what it meant when no lights were on anywhere.” I yell out.

I heard her mumbling something about why do people have to be smart asses in disasters.

Riley was in the truck, feet propped on the steering wheel and ready to go. We said our goodbyes to Marc and Trey with the promise we would check in on the radios he had set up in his truck and home.

Diane is in the truck, with her 44 in her hand. I immediately said, “oh hell no.” She said, “What?” I told her I would no more let her hold a gun than I would give one over to Remington, my 5-month-old great-great niece. Again, another stink eye from Diane, but I had confiscated the gun, and we were on our way.

Marc gave us a map to use since communications were down across the country. I had Diane checking our route and plotting our way there.

She gets our route planned out with us heading to highway 78 east.

At this point I am worried about Bobby. I can’t get in touch with him. The phones are not working now and I have heard nothing about that part of the U.S. I know that he can take care of himself, but he is not the type that can come up with instant fixes to situations he is thrust into. Yes, I mean he is not technically inclined and does not have a sense of rigging things to work that would otherwise not work.

Diane tells me not to worry, he is ok. So I have to believe that she is right.

As we drive, we see so many people running from their pursuers. The zombies. We see looting. People are trying to survive and are using whatever means they have to do that.

There are vehicles parked on the sides of the highway, doors left open, some have bodies still in them. It looks like people were trying to escape and were caught in the middle of a getaway and attacked. Blood and gore. That is the only word to describe what we see.

We finally make it to Jasper, Alabama. Now I don’t know a lot about Jasper, but let’s just say Bobby and I did not have a good experience there when we passed through some years back. No hospitality at all, man. So the sooner we get out of here, the better.

It’s time to find gas for the truck. So I tell Diane to look around for a store that may have items we can use. She sees a Quick Stop and we pull in. I have her sit in the truck, ready to drive if we have to make a fast escape. I get out with the 44 and walk towards the store. While I am walking, two zombies come from the side of the store. Although they amble, I am not a fan of them getting too close. So I shoot each of them in the knee. They fall, and still try to crawl towards me. At least I slowed them down.

Diane yells, “You shot them!”

I tried hard to not make any smart ass comment, but I failed miserably as I yelled back, “Really? It was that obvious?”

I hear her say, “smart ass brat.”

I get into the store and start looking around for anyone in there who may not be infected, but I don’t see anyone. So I walk behind the counter to see if I may can get the gas pumps on as sometimes there are generators in case of power failures. I know this as I was a convenience store manager at one point in my long line of job descriptions. I get the pumps on. While I am behind the counter, I notice cigarettes. Yes, I quit 2 months ago, but I think now may be a good time to start back. And I refuse to ride too far with Diane and no cigarettes. So I load up on Marlboros. I go to the cooler and grab some Pepsi twelve packs as I am an addict and need them to survive. What I wouldn’t do for some ice.

On my way back to the truck to pump some gas, I notice Diane pointing to the south corner of the store. I am scared to look. But I do. And all I see is a horde of about twenty-five zombies coming our way. I speed up my pace and throw the arm load of stuff I got out of the store into the back of the truck. I hurry and get the gas started pumping into the truck and grab a second pump to fill all the cans Marc has placed in the back for us and fill his second tank.

We get the tanks and jugs filled and Diane crawls through the sliding back window to get in the back of the truck, with her Remington 770 30 06 bolt action with a scope. What the hell does Marc have at his house, a small arsenal?

As I am driving, Diane starts picking off zombies blocking our exit. I guess living next door to a son and grandson who like to hunt have made her a better shot.

I look into the rear view mirror to see zombies falling like flies being sprayed with a can of Raid. We make it out of the parking lot and back on the highway, and Diane crawls back through the window. I look at her and ask, “Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?” she casually says, “Do you think all I do is garden and can my vegetables?” I shut up after that. At that point I didn’t care where she learned to shoot, I was just happy she had.

We continue our drive and we make it to Norcross, Georgia. A small town that has a big road block set up. Now I’m not one to ignore road blocks and police cars. But at this point, I have to wonder why in the hell would they see the need to set up a road block in the middle of an apocalypse? Are they arresting zombies? Do they think they can round them up and heard them to a safe zone? So I ask Diane, “What do you think?” she glares at me as if to say, “what the hell do you think I think?” she says, “I think they are up to no good.” I said, “I think you are right. So what do we do?” “Floor it” she says. “What the hell for? Why do I want to do that?” I asked.

Diane says, “Well, we have two choices. We can either pull up and see what they want and take the chance that they want our supplies and truck. Or we can floor it like I said and I will shoot out tires as we approach.”  “Can you hit the tires while we are moving?” I asked. Her next statement gave me no comfort at all. She replied, “We will see.” I said, “What the hell does that mean?” I was rewarded with a growl of “shut the hell up and drive.” So I drove.

As we slowly rolled up a little closer, we heard the police in the front of the roadblock yell, “please stop and get out with your hands up.” My dear sister shouts back, “Kiss our ass. We are not getting out and why do you have a road block set up in the middle of no damn where.” I look at her and ask, “Do you really think you need to poke the bear?” She says, “why not. The chances of them being legitimate are slim to none. And I am in no hurry to get kidnapped, beat, raped and stripped of our truck and supplies. How about you?” “Point taken.” I say.

Again, we hear, “get out with your hands up.” At this point, Diane fires a warning shot to let them know we will do no such thing. I look over at her and ask, “Are you ready?” She smiles and says, “oh hell yes.” At this point I am wondering who the hell took my sister and replaced her with the female version of Rambo.

Diane starts firing shots at tires blowing them out one by one. We take some shots to the sides of the truck. Marc is going to kick my ass when he sees his truck shot all to hell and back.

As we get closer, I see Deputy Dawg in the middle of the highway, standing there like he can stop a truck. He fires a shot and hits the windshield, leaving a crack in it. I yell at him that he will be the one to explain to my nephew why he shot out his window. Now, most people will move when they see a huge vehicle coming at them. Not Deputy Dawg. He continued to stand there and I continued toward him and ran his ass over and knocked him in the dirt. As we passed by the last one who was standing there staring, Diane casually flips them the bird as we pass and yells out the window at them, “You dumb asses.”

“Well, now we have an entourage.” I tell Diane.

She looks behind to see the other two cars coming at full speed. I tell her to take an aim at the tire to slow them down.

I look in the mirror and they are still behind us. I hear Diane pop off a shot as I am about to ask her what the hell she is doing.

The car in the front swerves off the side of the highway and flips.

“Great work.” I tell her.

The second car slows to check on their partner and while they are slowing, Diane uses the opportunity to take another shot. She tells me to stop and she takes aim. The radiator on the car starts blowing steam. She has hit it with her shot. I can hear the man getting out spraying a whole stream of expletives as he does. I yell back at him, “assholes!”

We continue on our way. Happy to have been able to get out of this cluster fuck in one piece.

The next leg of our journey goes without incident. On entering Spartanburg, South Carolina, we decide this will be a good place to stop and rest. There is no electricity anywhere at this point, so we decide to stay in the truck for the night. I look around and slowly get out of the truck with Riley on his leash. He has a tendency to run off when he has gained any scrap of freedom and I didn’t have time for a chase right now. He walks around and takes care of his business. I know this because I turn around in time to see him kicking grass up over his head after he finishes.

We stretch and walk around for a few minutes, then Diane gets into her stash of food and starts getting us something to eat out. Remember, we are from the South, so she has tons of food from the garden she has canned, and apparently brought with us as she has boxes of stuff in the back of the truck. She gets out the tomato soup. I decide to ask her at this point, “are you going to use your toaster oven to warm it?” she simply says, “stop being a smart ass.” So I shut up in case she decides to throw some dirt over into my soup.

Riley is happily munching on some beef jerky. He also has a couple of chicken jerky strips he strategically hid in his blanket for later.

So we finish eating and decide to try to get some sleep. Thanks the Gods Marc saw fit to get an extended cab truck.

Around 3 am, I was suddenly awoken by a shrill bark right beside my ear. I almost had a heart attack. Had I been in an open space there is no doubt I would have tried to run. I look at Riley and ask him,
“What the hell are you barking at?” he looks at me, then back out the back window. He looks like he is telling me to get my ass up and look. He is on guard and he has alerted me and it is my job to do the rest. You know the old tale is 3:00 am is the hour of the dead. Well, I can do without any dead hanging around, thank you.

I raise up and look out the window. And I see…. Nothing. Diane asks me what is going on. I tell her that I don’t see anything but apparently Riley did, or he just decided to bark and scare me for lack of anything better to do.