Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (68 page)

All that being said, I will make this observation: I don’t give
these
people six months. They don’t have the farmland that the Winnemucca settlement has. From what little I’ve seen, there are too many people making decisions. Remember how impotent our congress had become? Well, these folks didn’t pay attention. Also, their security is crap. I don’t know if it can just be credited to this place being a newer settlement, but I personally saw three roamers—one that
I
put down—inside the perimeter. I’m near the center of town.

Did I mention that I am sleeping up on top of a concrete building that once acted as the public restrooms in the city park? Oh yeah, this place has got problems.

Monday, August 9

I could not get out of that place soon enough. It was just too damn bizarre. I am happy to be able to pedal my bicycle once again. However, I will have to be very careful. It seems as if the undead are really drawn to the human buffet that is Fer
nley.

I never knew Nevada was so mountainous. I guess I always pi
ctured it a lot like New Mexico and Arizona. There is certainly plenty of desert, but there are also plenty of snow-capped mountains. The good side of this is all of the little streams and creeks that I keep running across.

Tonight I am camped out inside an RV that went off the road and ended up on its side. There was a well-preserved but very dead woman in the front passenger seat. She died from a nasty head injury. It looks like…well…her forehead is smashed flat at an angle that I would be willing to bet matches the dash of the RV. Of course she didn’t turn because she died a normal death. I wonder where the driver went? There is no sign of a struggle, and no blood except a little bit around the dead wo
man’s nose and ears. Did I mention that the woman is little more than a dried husk?  I made no attempt to move her because I am certain that she would only crumble in my hands. Besides, I’m sleeping in the back.

Thursday, August 12

Vegas is still my destination, but it is officially on hold. I guess it was just a matter of time before I encountered some really bad people again. I am currently hiding out in a movie theater—what is it with me and theaters—waiting for it to get dark outside. Once it does, I’m gonna bring some serious pain down on the gang of sickos that slither around in this infested hole of a town.

If I die…you can bet I will be bringing a lot of them with me. I won’t be carrying anything tonight except for my wea
pons. So if you are reading this and the rest of the pages are blank, then that means that I am dead. And if you see a zombie decked out in leather, bristling with weapons, with a ‘Mean People Suck’ sweatshirt underneath, please shoot me in the head.

The first sign that something was wrong came a mile out of the town proper. It was the sign: Entering Fallon…the town that God forgot. That last little bit was spray-painted on in red. Da
ngling from the sign was an armless, legless, female zombie with the word “whore” carved into her torso. When I got closer, it was obvious that she couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. She mewled and gurgled at me until I put my spear into her head.

As I crept into town, I had to put the leash on Sam because there were too many zombies around. It only took me about twenty minutes to realize that they were
all
female. I reached a city park that had reinforced fencing, and found more zombies—also all female—standing in clusters.

I was under a school bus trying to make sense of everything when a large cart being drawn by eight women, all naked and alive, came rolling down the street. They were escorted by at least two dozen men in everything from leathers to what looked like a baseball catcher’s gear. The ones bringing up the rear were pulling along four boys from age eight to somewhere in the early teens. Once there, they manhandled them into a chute that em
ptied into the park/zombie pen. What they did next solidified my decision to stay and fight. They opened the cart, and then they began tossing bundles from one person to the next like you would sandbags to hold back a river. The last man at the end of the human conveyer tossed the bundle over the fence. These babies’ cries were real.

A couple of the boys put up a really good fight, but it only served as a source of entertainment for the gang of men. One of the boys tried desperately to keep the swaddled infants away from the tearing jaws of death. Another managed to break free, climb the fence, and make it all the way to the sobbing f
emales who had been leading the carts. He grabbed one and hugged her before being yanked away again and forced into the chute once more.

I was curious how come there wasn’t more zombie traffic, and finally spotted the RVs pulled or pushed in place at the head of the three possible entry points to this street. The few that were in the area had been herded into some of the buildings li
ning the streets.

Back to the park scene. When the other end of that chute opened, the boys were forced into the park by the men with what looked like from here to be cattle prods. After that, it really didn’t take long. The zombies are so numerous that there isn’t enough left to come back. Sure, some of the boys lasted longer, running.  But it was really a forgone conclusion, and none of them had a chance of escape.

The women were forced to watch. Some were even unharnessed and dragged to the fence for a closer look. During one particularly nasty moment, one of them was held down and brutally raped next to the fence where a young boy—apparently her son—was torn apart and feasted upon just inches away; the only thing separating them being that thin fence that may as well have been a mile-wide chasm.

Thinking back, I’m surprised I didn’t cry. I believe that I was simply too horrified and shocked. I have no idea how we have come to this. I shudder to think of what went on in the minds of people that I walked by every day in the Old World. Considering what happened to me at the hands of my town’s sheriff b
efore I escaped and found Sam and his group that day…

Who were these men before? School teachers? Cops? Cas
hiers at the local grocery store?

The thing is, I’ve met good people, too. Decent folks who help the weak and care for others. But the bad…the evil…it seems to be amplified to a level that I could have never i
magined human beings capable of, and it  just rips out my heart.

Eventually, a few of the men went to one of the RV sealed ends of one of the streets and disappeared. Obviously their job was to lead away any of the zombies that had gathered. The women were hitched up to their harnesses again and away they went. Two men stayed behind for a few minutes to open the doors of all the buildings along the streets again to allow the undead ca
ptives to resume roaming free.

I wonder if the reason that the zombies stick around is b
ecause of this feeding event that I witnessed. Several hundred converged on the park once the men left, pressing against the fence where their zombie sisters stumbled about covered in fresh blood and gore. It actually allowed me an opportunity to escape from the area without incident.

I spent the next couple of hours trying to find that cart. You’d think it wouldn’t be hard in a town with so few living. It turned out to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Fortunately, late in the afternoon, I found what I was looking for.

They had doubled back and taken a big circle to return to what is obviously their base. It sits atop a big, ugly, brown hill just past the northeast corner of town right next to the airfield.

They have it walled off pretty good. It is next to imposs
ible to get an accurate idea of their numbers. For one, the wall is brick and about eight feet tall; for another, they all dress the same and I don’t have any binoculars.

I spent all day and all night watching—and unfortunately liste
ning—to the comings, goings, and carryings on of these bastards. I’ve developed a plan. The downside is that it will probably kill everybody, including the female captives. However, if it were me in there, and with what I’ve heard, I would welcome death over the alternative. The problem I’m gonna have is getting away.

Friday, August 13

No matter what, tonight is my “go” night. Last night, a caravan of strange looking, obviously heavily modified motorcycles rolled into town and straight to the encampment. Three of the motorcycles were hauling wheeled cages. I would guess that there were at least a dozen women and young girls crammed into each of them. This has to stop.

I’m not afraid to die. I am only afraid to fail.

One of the hardest things will be leaving this behind. By that, I mean these books. I hate the thought of losing these journals. I know that if something happens to me, there is no guarantee that these books will ever be found, or appreciated in the event that they are. However, if something goes wrong tonight and these were to fall into the hands of those animals, I am afraid that the pages would be used for nothing more than toilet paper or to start fires. There is no way that I could allow those assholes to ever lay a finger on these. I guess I never put any thought into how I would ensure that these were passed on.

Now, more than ever, I am grateful that at least there were co
pies of Sam’s journal, and that a few people have a copy of my first one.

Monday, August 23

Of all of the places to be catching my breath…a cemetery. I’ve endured hunger, thirst, the kind of fatigue that makes you want to just curl up into a ball and die. I’ve traveled through a part of Nevada that looks—and feels—like a glimpse of what it must be like if there truly is a Hell. Oh yeah, and an earthquake. Something tells me that my days may be numbered and my luck has finally run out.

Once again I am down to less than the necessities. I had to leave my bicycle and trailer. The satchel that I am carrying has my blade sharpening kit, a spare canteen—empty—and my journals. I have my spear and a long knife on each hip. I am tr
ying to save the last swallows of water left in my other canteen for as long as I can manage.

On the plus side, I don’t think that there are any survivors left back in Fallon. Oh yeah, and then there is the guy lying dead on the ground ten feet away from me; he is probably the last of my pursuers.

It’s still a bit of a blur, and I’m certain that I can’t recall every single thing that happened, but I think that I can finally take the time to jot some of this down.

I waited until almost sunset and made my way back to that fenced in park. It wasn’t like these guys had any reason to think that somebody would be fool enough to fiddle with their fence. All I had to do was flip a few latches and remove a pair of steel poles that were in place to keep the fence barred. From there, it was simply a matter of being a bit of a zombie Pied Pi
per while still managing to avoid the roamers remaining loose in town. Staying ahead of the one pack was easy; avoiding the others was a bit more of a chore.

I was only worried about my first phase of the attack when it came to the one bridge that I had to cross. Thankfully, the Kee
pers of Fallon were way overconfident and far too engrossed in their nasty habits to have anything resembling lookouts posted. Their idea of security consisted of the wall around their little compound and about fifty or so zombies on tethers designed more to keep the living away than anything else. Well, they didn’t count on me…did they!

I’d crept close enough a couple of nights prior to putting my plan in motion so as to get a good look at their “intricate” secur
ity. Some were chained, others were held in place by strips of leather; nothing a good pair of bolt-cutters couldn’t handle. The posts that held them in place were all about four feet tall, so reach wasn’t going to be a problem.

The beam they used to bar their gate was no big deal, but the pair of double-wides mounted on wheels that took a gaggle of men to move would be a bigger challenge. That entrance would become a bit of a logjam, and I didn’t know how many other e
xits they might have, but that was my objective.

When that first chain clattered to the ground, I knew that I was screwed. The door was more like a heavy grate. It looked like it had been stolen from a jail cell. I guess it made it easier to see things on the other side, but that goes both ways. I glanced over my shoulder; the leading edge of the zombie horde I’d led here was reaching the drawbridge-like crossing that I’d had a
lmost no trouble sliding the three-foot wide plank over to allow access. So far…nothing was stirring inside the compound. Yep, those guys were disgustingly overconfident.

When the final chain fell, I heard my first indications of mov
ement. It sounded like a door opening about twenty feet or so away. I looked around, and sure enough, directly across from me this guy steps out. He was carrying a lantern which lit up his face perfectly. Well, at least good enough to give a clear shot with my crossbow. He never saw it coming.

The propane lantern made way too much noise when it hit the ground. I was flipping up the bar that secured the door when I noticed more lanterns flaring up inside the other buildings, I shoved open the heavy gate and dropped a lit flare just inside and out of the entryway; sorta giving the zombies a target wit
hout risking the possibility that they veer away from the sputtering road flare. The dazzling white light gave the entire courtyard a peculiar glow.