I have volunteered for the latter location along with Meredith, Trent Blake, Scott Paulson—a twenty-two-year-old kid who obviously spent a lot of hours pumping iron, Steve Morgan, and Sasha Ivanoff—the nineteen-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed counterpart to Scott. We’ve been told only to scout and report. If it is occupied, we are not to make contact, but simply return. Both teams were given similar edicts.
Everybody staying behind will be involved in an extended boundary patrol. Lady B is in charge of setting up a defensive perimeter which includes some sheer sided pits about ten feet long, four feet wide, and six feet deep. Also, razor and barbed-wire barricades will be put up. Since it is strictly for zombie control, they will use trees and not bother with fence posts. Also, another set of two teams will work in shifts, keeping a lookout on the Spokane Valley. Their job is to stay alert for the mass movement heading our way, as well as watching to see if the Air Force folks are probing with any personnel in our direction.
There was a lot of discussion and debate, but to me...it seems like we are at war. I wonder if we’ll ever find peace...not just from the walking dead, but from humanity as well. Due to all the logistics...we will be leaving in three days.
I am going to spend these few days with Meredith. We have no idea when the luxury of just enjoying one another will come. I spoke to Tim before he left for the first cycle of standing watch over the valley. We wished each other good luck. Funny, I think on all the times I bid farewell to friends and acquaintances. I never realized or even considered it could be our last moments together. It has come to such a dire and extreme situation for me to realize that it is important to treat every relationship as something special to cherish and not take for granted.
I will be sure to say something to all those who I spent all those days, nights...life and death situations with. Meredith also mentioned that if we get back, perhaps we could consider having Joey live with us. That was a surprise on two levels; one, the idea of basically adopting Joey (he lives in a barracks with six other orphaned children), two, Meredith wants to live with me!
Wow!
Thursday, May 8
I almost forgot how horrible it is out here. Oddly enough, I’m not speaking of the undead. We have to cut through the Panhandle National Forest on service roads that saw a wet, cold, nasty winter. No crews have come through to tidy up after Mother Nature. The Hummers are struggling. Also, we are actually at elevations where snow is not only still present, but deep enough to force us to back track and change course a few times. We barely made fifty miles today as we sit camped next to the Coeur d’Alene River just north and east of someplace called Cougar Peak. What should’ve taken a few hours took all day.
Tomorrow, Steve and I will go on foot north. Scott and Sasha will go south. We will look for a good crossing spot. Best case, of course, is to find an intact bridge.
The best thing I can say is that, at least on our first day, we were fortunate enough not to encounter a single zombie. Although, about an hour ago we did hear the distinct, yet distant, sound of a gunfire burst. Direction is very tough to determine from our location which is basically a trough carved out of these mountains.
Friday, May 9
It is a good thing we made sure everybody was clear that this would likely be a slow process. Fortunately, having two-way radios, we managed to keep communication most of today. When the signal began cutting in and out, we marked the location by tying a white tee-shirt to an overhanging branch of one of the many trees along the river’s edge.
It wasn’t more than an hour after losing contact that we encountered a roamer. It looked like a hardcore biker, still suited up in its leathers and, unfortunately for us, wearing its helmet. It was making a lot of noise as it charged through the brush like an angry bear. The now blood-caked remnants of a forked goatee stuck out stiffly like a divining rod from its gore smeared chin. I could tell instantly that this thing had been feasting recently.
Steve and I flared out, forcing it to choose a target. I won. I adjusted my backpedaling to allow Steve to move in from behind. It was a simple maneuver, one we often used on single targets. Neither of us even considered that bikers often travel in gangs...until twelve more of the damn things burst from the woods. I know this was not an intentional ambush (at least I’m pretty sure). Keeping our location a secret quickly lost its priority status. We both drew our handguns aiming for the couple without helmets first.
I dropped two before I had to return my attention to the first one I had been luring. At least I could see its face. I brought my arm up as it closed to just a few feet away and fired. I think I heard the sound of my bullet ricochet inside the helmet a couple times.
By the time it was over, two of my four magazines were spent. We hadn’t expected much activity.
A few minutes later, the victims of the zombie biker gang came stumbling and crawling out of the trees. It was a group of kids! The oldest could not be older than sixteen, the youngest, about nine. They had been torn up pretty bad. Some were missing limbs that had been ripped off in the vile feeding frenzy. Most had gaping holes in their chests and stomachs. The youngest, had to be a girl, was missing both legs, dragging itself through the tall grass by one arm. The other arm was gone from the elbow. A long gray coil dragged behind like a serpent’s tail.
I could not think about what they might have done to survive this long, or what had caused their demise. Steve and I simply switched to our blades and put the five young bodies to rest. At some point, I had started crying without realizing it. My eyes blurred, and I missed the creeper twice before finally driving the point of my blade through the back of its skull.
We are up in some trees now. Steve is asleep. I am listening to the gurgle of the water, staring up at the moon. It looks like the face of a little girl.
Saturday, May 10
We are camped beside a bridge. Honestly, Steve and I are too damned tired to start back. Plus, we’ve got company. We found the camp that was the home for those kids that the gang of biker-zombies attacked.
It seems some of those kids were on a foraging mission. They were part of a group of twenty-three kids from Thompson Falls, Montana. When the plague hit, these kids were part of the population that ran for it. They left by bus. There was an accident when the lead bus swerved to avoid a bunch of zombies. The three bus caravan was totaled. One went down a steep embankment on its side. They were the lucky ones. I guess they could hear the screams begin above almost as soon as they came to a jarring stop against a huge boulder.
Initially there had been about a dozen adults. Two were already infected. It was one of the older girls, Brittany Maldanado, who figured out how the disease spread. However, adults being adults, nobody would listen. Since the kids were kept away from the sick, the adults were all gone in the first week. They had managed to make it to a campground. It was deserted…either abandoned or the keeper had turned and then wandered off.
There were plenty of supplies at first. But when they had practically stripped the storeroom bare, it had become necessary to forage. Using a map that had all the Ranger Stations marked, they systematically went on raids. A few times there had been a zombie. But they had heard reports on how to dispatch them and everybody carried a weapon of some sort. Against one or two, it seems they have been able to take care of themselves.
Anyways, those kids actually spotted Steve and I before we saw them. Once they made contact and all the sharing of information was finished (the ten-year-old little girl named September Marie Bluthe and her older brother Rusty were in that group we had just put down) the kids were able to show us the bridge. They will come with us back to the others, showing us a series of logging roads we can drive the Hummers on to the bridge. Then, they will come back to Irony.