He still says he never saw the three men until they were right in front of him waving their arms frantically. He also says, and I believe him, he wouldn’t have slowed down the slightest in light of recent events. The men dove out of the way at the last second and came up shooting.
As we rounded the corner, we were just in time to see the deuce swerve and then roll up the embankment on the left and flip onto its right side. Three men were in a line and, as they walked side-by-side, began pumping rounds into the incapacitated vehicle.
Whether it was how focused they were on shooting, or the noise from their guns, they never had a chance to react. I think one of them just started to turn his head when I plowed into them with my deuce.
That was also the almost exact same moment that the other deuce exploded.
I slammed on the brakes and we skidded to a stop. The heat from the flames made it impossible to approach much closer than ten or twenty feet for a moment. Then the rounds in back started to cook off. All of us had gotten out and were just standing in the road like gawking idiots when shots began popping like popcorn. We dove back behind the protection of the truck until it stopped.
Of course by then we had the leading edge of the zombies we had left behind shambling up the road towards us. They were spread out enough that we were able to dispatch them without drawing guns…not that our location was likely any great big secret.
Bill and Jimmy along with Kyle took care of the zombies. Meanwhile, Meredith and I inched as close as we could to the burning deuce. It was Meredith who spotted Roy’s legs on the far side of the upside-down vehicle. We raced around to the other side. The deuce was sitting on its hood now, laying crossways blocking most of the road. The explosion had helped flip it the rest of the way over and deposit it smack dab in our way.
Unfortunately, Shannon had not managed to crawl out. I tried not to look, but I could see her body in the flames. Roy later told me he had shot her when he couldn’t get close enough to save her and it was clear she was not going to get free.
We have no idea who those three men were. We’ve seen no movement, living or otherwise since the ordeal. After a vote, we decided unanimously to continue on.
We will move tomorrow. Everybody was pretty worn out from events. Plus, we buried Shannon and planted markers for Antonio and Trent.
Tuesday, June 3
Some sort of insane storm is pounding us today. It started before sunrise with a freakishly heavy rain. After about twenty minutes it was gone and the sun rose bright and hot. We got rolling, and in no time were forced to stop at a huge wash out. It looks like a scoop of hillside was unceremoniously dumped on the road. Going around is not an option. There is a steep drop on the right side and an incline on the left. All we can do is back track.
Three more of those thunder and lightning riddled down-pours have come and gone as we tried first to dig out a path. That was fine until we unearthed a rock almost as big as the Hummer, which by itself might have been capable of getting over the blockage. The deuce has no chance. Next we back tracked. We finally reached an offshoot road that seemed to go in the right direction. Only it came to an end at some huge clearing that looks like some serious logging activity was taking place…back when that mattered.
There was no signs of activity and the vote is to camp here tonight. None of the heavy equipment is of any use, but there is a trailer. We’ll bed down there for tonight as these storms continue to roll in about an hour and a half apart. At least we can stretch out a bit and dry off. We’ll try again tomorrow. We just seem to be lacking a lot of heart.
Wednesday, June 4
What I saw this morning still has my blood running cold.
I was the first to wake up as a beam of sunlight came through a frosted window and pierced my eyelids. Very quietly I slipped from Meredith’s arms and put on my shoes and socks. Tip-toeing around the others, I carefully and quietly opened the door.
I was grabbed suddenly; a rough hand was placed over my mouth. Huge arms turned me and I was face-to-face with Bill Steiner. He brought his hand away and quickly mimed the index finger to the lips in the universal sign for “be quiet”. Then, he placed his hands on my head and turned me so that I could see the huge open clearing.
A steady stream of undead was trudging through the brush, branches, and stumps. Imagine every busy sidewalk scene you’ve ever seen of rush hour New York, now multiply it by about ten!
We were against the trailer at an angle that made it unlikely we would be seen. Still, there had to be several thousand of those things. They numbered about ten or twenty wide and I had no idea how many had already passed. The tail end of their line was somewhere out of sight in the woods.
I’d seen zombies follow something relentlessly. Even after losing the trail those things just continue on the path they had begun. If this was a case of that, I wondered if this was a cluster from Spokane.
All I know is there were lots! Bill signaled me to go in the trailer and pre-warn the others which I did. One by one we all came out and simply watched. The “zombie parade” lasted all morning and well into the afternoon. Starting the vehicles would be folly. That swarm would change course and come for us.
With them a few hundred yards away, we were actually in relative safety. Nothing caused any of them to wander our direction so…we simply waited. And waited.
Once we were confident that they had passed, we had a lengthy discussion that revealed something we had once believed in to be utterly false. No place was safe. No matter how far away from society we retreat, those things can show up at any time in huge numbers.
We will stay put for at least today and tomorrow to ensure that that horde has moved a good distance away. All of us are curious and want to go across the clearing to see the area that the zombies passed through.
Thursday, June 5
Went across the clearing. You could smell the stench from about a hundred feet away. The ground was not only trampled down, but bits of gore were scattered everywhere. Not just the insides falling out of open wounds, but entire limbs. None of us were so bold as to suggest venturing into the woods in either direction.
One other particularly grisly discovery was of a couple of zombies in various stages of decay that must’ve fallen and been unable to regain their footing. They were nothing more than smashed pulpy remains. But, the resilience of the skull left the head intact. The eyes, milky and black bloodshot followed our every move and the mouth opened and closed with the click of teeth. Nothing that a good stomping with a pair of industrial boots couldn’t put an end to.
We returned to the trailer and spent the rest of today scavenging everything that we thought we might be able to use. Other than fuel, the best thing we nabbed was one of those big chainsaws with the yard long blade. Hopefully it will work. None of us wanted to start it up because of the noise.
Maybe we’ll move out tomorrow.
Friday, June 6
We have two choices. We can back track to where we split and found the children the first time we made this trip and then hike it to the bridge with whatever gear we can carry. Or…we can make a run through a handful of popu-lated areas and hope we don’t get mobbed.
The argument is fairly evenly split and this is one of those times I truly wish we had an actual leader. My concern is that we simply decide and get moving. After what we witnessed with that migrating horde of zombies, the folks at Irony are living under false security.