Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (58 page)

We found a place to stay. The sign beside the highway said ‘SE Weber Rd.’ A little ways in, we found a house. My guess is that either neighbors or family—perhaps running from the city—brought the horrors here. At least five of the eleven people here were small children. I say “at least” because I am quite ce
rtain that there were infants here. There just isn’t anything left of them to find to prove their existence.

In one of the photos on the wall, there is a picture of a wo
man holding an infant. It is one of those artistic skin-on-skin black and whites with soft diffused borders. I put my blade into the woman personally. She was even wearing the same diamond necklace from the picture.

We cleaned out the house and dragged the bodies out back. Eric says we’ll probably have to stay here a few days. His sp
ider-senses say that there is another storm coming. We aren’t too worried about the zeds right now. That means a big roaring fire in the fireplace and even a few oil lamps! Absolute luxury!

Eric slipped out for a couple of hours and came back with a deer over his shoulders already stripped. I guess two years of not b
eing hunted has made them plentiful. Zombies have no interest in them. Either that or they are too slow—the zombies, not the deer—to catch them.

Monday, March 1

Here’s a great idea. Trek through the mountains at the apex of winter. Meredith Gainey…you are a DUMBASS!

Wednesday, March 3

When exactly is spring? I don’t actually recall. But if I see one more snowflake, I’m gonna scream.

***

AARRRRGGHHHHH!!!!!

Saturday, March 6

Rain!  Sweet, blessed enemy of the snow! Come and wash your frozen brethren from my sight. Oh…and I’m getting REALLY bored with venison. (All I hear is my mother’s voice saying, “Meredith Gainey…eat your dinner!  There are people in China going hungry.”  I never understood that logic.)

Sunday, March 7

Spent the day outside. We walked (hiked) out to the highway. The snow is washing away. Eric says we should be able to resume our trek in a day or two if this keeps up. I think there is less than a foot of the stuff still on the ground.

Oh yeah, Eric says we will probably have to deal with this sort of erratic weather for the next month at least.

Monday, March 8

Holy Crap!

Okay, remember the whole thing about dogs turning? (But not cats, that is still so weird.) Well, wolves are related to dogs. AND, if you leave rotting meat outside—for instance, rotting zombie corpses—wolves will come back and pick over the remains.

We woke in the dark of night, the fire down to glowing e
mbers, to something
wrong.
At first I thought it was the cold that woke me. Then I realized I wasn’t the slightest bit cold. And Sam was growling. I reached for Eric, but no surprise, he was already awake.

There was a scratching at the door. Zombie-wolves have a yowl that you only need to hear once to remember forever. It made my hair stand up on my arms (and legs…no, I haven’t shaved in a while. What’s it to ya?). Also, I peed just a little.

We got up and put on all our gear: lined gloves, goggles, leather coat, and modified welder’s leathers over our denim. What can I say? We’ve gotten a little bit lazy having been so long without seeing a single soul…living or undead. The house has kept us toasty with the huge fireplace and two woodstoves going twenty-four/seven.

Weapons ready, we had to wait another hour for dawn. What? Did you really think that we would venture out to fight zombie-wolves in the dark?  As soon as it was light enough, we snuck out a side window after making a bunch of noise at the front door to lure them to one spot.

I am thankful that those things are no more agile or limber than their human counterparts. The fight was…different. Actually, if anything, those zombie-wolves were even clumsier than humans. They staggered and stumbled a lot. Perhaps it is because of the four-legged thing.

The scariest thing is that you couldn’t tell that the wolves had turned until you got a good look at their eyes. Since they’d eaten contaminated flesh, there were no injuries to give them away. Their eyes, however, are even creepier than a human’s. It is just so sinister looking.

We dispatched them quickly, but it seems to have really bothered Eric. I’ve seen him take out a lot of zombies of the two-legged variety without wincing (even the little ones, which most folks are VERY squeamish about). In fact, I’d say he is the only person I’ve met who, like me, is very dethatched when it comes to taking down zombies. But this—the wolves really appear to have upset him.

Tuesday, March 9

Finally! We are back on the move. Only, if you trade one house you’ve cleared for another that you haven’t, is it really a good thing? The best thing about this place is the river practically right outside the back door. I have no idea which one it is, and when I asked Eric, he said, “Pick a name and that is what it shall be.” Personally, I think he is still moping about the wolves.

At first I didn’t know what the hell Eric was doing when he just turned off the highway and we started walking along this branch-strewn road that was quickly being supplanted by the forest. I could hear the trickling of a nearby stream as we walked deeper into the gloom.

Maybe he knew this place existed. I’ve been nosing around while he went out to hunt some sort of furry critter. I mostly flipped through dusty photo albums. I guess I thought that I would miraculously find a picture with him in it. No such luck.

Still, this place is nice. We had to take out a lady today who looked as if she’d dressed for an extravagant dinner party. Well…if you take out the fact that she was missing an arm and a chunk of her throat big enough to cause her head to tilt. She was in the bathroom. From the looks of things, her husband came home as one of
them
. He got her in the hallway.

Of course the blood has long since dried, but there are smears and stains on the walls leading away from a huge stain on the hardwood floor in the living room. A well-gnawed bone that is probably her missing arm—part of it at least—was there (stuck to the floor by the congealed and dried blood). It was o
nly part, which made me wonder where the rest is, and where her hand might be.

I took down the husband while Eric, followed by Sam, took out the wife. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there is a huge po
rtrait over the fireplace that definitely pegs these two as our couple. We put both bodies in the bathtub and covered them with a sheet. Now they are at rest together forever.

There is a loft here. That is where the master bedroom is. Also, there is a pair of smaller bedrooms on the main floor. One of them had its windows broken by a fallen branch. I wan
ted to put the bodies in that room, but Eric said it might bring more wolves. He said they—the living variety— could jump through those windows without a problem. Good enough for me.

Wednesday, March 10

Heavy rains and wind today. We are staying put. No sense rushing out to be in such miserable weather. I thought we heard screams last night.

Staying alert.

Friday, March 12

Back on the move. It’s clear, but very cold again. This weather is freakin’ bi-polar. At least the home we are crashing in tonight was empty when we arrived.

No sights or sounds since that noise that we are both certain was a human scream the other night. Not a single wandering zombie up here. I can see where this area made for a great location to run to when this whole thing started. The only drawbacks are the weather—which could be as lethal…if not more so than zombies—and lack of readily available food. I do not know how I would be doing if I’d made this journey alone. Not that I’m not a capable person, I most certainly am. It’s just that if you go into a slump, you starve. And the larger the group—had I travelled with several people instead of only Eric—the bigger the supply issue becomes.

Being a duo, this is monumentally easier. In fact, we have more than we need. We end up wasting a lot of food. I feel only a little guilty about that.

Last night, I was watching the rain come down as the shadows of night were swallowing up the surrounding landscape. I thought long and hard about what I expect to find in Las Vegas. Here’s the kicker: I couldn’t come up with a single thing. At least not one that holds up to scrutiny. This is all about being selfish. I’ve been let loose in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and plan on seeing everything. I realize that my goals aren’t very lofty at this point, but Europe might as well be another planet. This is just the first step. I mean it could’ve just as easily been Disneyland.

But that would’ve been silly.

Saturday, March 13

We found a small inn…and a lot of dead people. Not zo
mbies, but honest-to-goodness dead folks. There is a church across the road with a dozen more bodies hanging from nooses. Most are frozen solid, but one is merely cold. This place is giving off seriously creepy vibes.

Checking out the inn (that is fun to say out loud); it looks like most of the people were beaten to death. Heads were crushed, but Eric got all
CSI
and pointed out the shattered arms on every single body. These people were trying to fend off an attacker or attackers. Looking even closer—which meant scraping off dried blood or pouring a little water on the body—we found no bite marks or scratches.

The most heartbreaking scene involved a woman who was still clutching the hand of a little girl no older than eight or nine. The rest of the arm and the body it was attached to were several feet away in a mangled heap. Axes were used here as well as blunt weaponry.

Of course we couldn’t stay at the inn. We decided on the church across the way instead. I don’t understand. Not one thing here makes sense. Hangings. Brutal mass slayings. WTF!

Eric and I will sleep in shifts tonight. We intend to be on the road as soon as we’ve both gotten a few hours of shuteye.

Tuesday, March 16

I can’t believe I ever considered making this trip alone. Thank God for Eric. I doubt I would be alive right now if not for him. This is like the mountain version of
Deliverance.

I guess there are little pockets of locals out here; and they don’t take kindly to strangers. These folks are no joke. They know this area well, are outdoor types—most are decked out in layers of furs—and remind me of the pictures that I saw in high school history books. You might remember the ones I’m talking about; the ones that are all grainy, black and white, showing the tra
ppers and gold diggers from the olden days. We ran into the first one when we were leaving the church a few days ago. Literally ran in to him.

We were harnessed up and making for the highway. A noise from the direction of the inn started us jogging. (Seriously, I
cannot convey how creepy the vibe in that area was.) This guy stumbled out of some trees, crashing into Eric and knocking him over. Thinking it was a zombie, I hit my quick-release buckle and came in with my scimitars flashing. Well, it was kinda dark so they weren’t really flashing, but you get my point. I connected solid with a body shot intended to distract the zombie and keep it from biting Eric. Then the zombie screamed. Too late, I recognized the stink coming off this thing to be of the booze, urine, shit, and vomit variety.

Eric shoved the body aside, wrenching his own knife from the eye socket and sending a spray of blood that turned the snow black in the pre-dawn gloom. I asked him if he was hurt and he said no. We got moving in a hurry, Sam leading the way as he trotted along like nothing was wrong and we hadn’t just killed a living person. Sam is well trained to sniff out zombies, to be alert for their presence. He would be absolutely useless for the next few days. Living people don’t come up on his radar.

We decided to duck into the trees and travel parallel to the road as much as we could. No sooner had we vanished into the pines when some sort of gang passed by on the highway. They were carrying torches…and something else. At first I thought it was a deer hanging from the pole hoisted between two of the group. I can’t even say men because they are so bundled that it was impossible to tell. Then the light from a nearby torch flickered just right and I could see the naked human body bound to it. Whatever it was, there were too many for Eric and I, so we retreated further into the woods.

That is where we discovered ‘Camp Despair.’  Mostly co
mprised of tents, but with a few log cabins; that place was like an old pioneer outpost. It is walled off by ten-foot high poles made from the abundance of pine trees. We didn’t go in. Eric climbed a tree and scouted it out. He reported twenty men, women, and children inside the walls. There is a huge fire pit in the center of camp. Also, there is a pair of huge stakes with a zombie chained to each one. We moved on, but our level of awareness is probably back up to where it belongs.

We had no choice but to put our sub-zero gear to the real test. We found a dense copse of trees and made camp. No fire t
onight. As the sun sets, I can hear the wolves howling. At least I know that they are living. Sam doesn’t care for it at all.

Wednesday, March 17

Met a small group of locals. On. Accident.

We’d broke camp and were moving along, just off the highway. By the way, big chunks of pavement are buckled or missing as the weather and lack of any department of transport
ation to tend it have let the road fall into a state of serious disrepair. Anyways, we were moving along when Eric gave me the signal to freeze. Ironic since I was already teeth-chattering cold.

I don’t know if I am just oblivious or what. However, these pe
ople stepped out of the trees—skinny ones not nearly big enough to hide behind in my opinion. They all had axes, blades, and hammers dangling from their furry outfits—many from places that I never considered hanging a weapon.

The woman was scraggly looking with at least half of her teeth missing. One of the men was gigantic. I’m talking Tom Lan
gston big, and that man was the largest person I’d ever seen in my life. The third man looked like the kinda guy who’ve had to register with the local police and isn’t allowed within five hundred yards of a school or playground. Hey…what can I say?  I’m a big fan of first impressions.