The Tale of Leroy Miles

[Nancy1340]

Very good story. Thanks

[streetpig1690]

August 24, 2010

Today started out as usual with my morning workout routine, minus the swim of course. I hate that I have had to cut the swim out, it is fantastic exercise. Maybe if I find a sporting goods store I can find an inflatable raft or something, keep my weapons, and gear in while swimming so I am not caught with my pants down again.

As soon as I was finished and cleaned up, I geared up and armed myself hopped into the truck to begin my search for a companion. I felt like a new man since my little hand-to-hand fighting exercise with the zombies on the 22nd. I have broken through my mental depression and thoughts that I am just plain damn crazy. I am going to survive this and get to my family, and kill every fucking undead or living bastard that gets in my way.

Since I have decided I will be here for sometime until the undead thin out I will need to go do a little more grocery shopping. My first stop for the day was a cul-de-sac I had passed on the way here just on the outskirts of the town that only had three houses on it. It had been relatively clear of the undead the last time I had drove by and if things had been quiet, none should have been attracted to the area.

As I turned onto the street I saw two undead begin to shuffle their way towards me, the rumble of the diesel motor letting them know lunch had just rolled in. Both were in horrible shape. Their clothing ripped and the blood on what was left of their clothing stained almost black. The two must have had a hell of a time dying. Their skin and muscles had been ripped to shreds before their death.

Exiting the truck, I raised the VEPR and scanned the area for additional threats. I would be damned if I was going to be taken by surprise again through negligence. The area was clear and I slung the rifle behind me, took out my mace, and advanced on the two hideous creatures before me. No show boating for me this time, I dispatched the two undead, now definitely dead, individuals quickly.

I circled all three houses looking in each window for movement inside. The only house with movement was the second one. There was a zombie in the living room. Looked like an old man who had been in his 70’s. That did not mean he was the only zombie inside but he was the only one I saw.

I decided to clear the first and third house before going in on the second. The front door to the first house was unlocked. I had decided that I would use the Ruger .22 pistol for clearing the house. I didn’t want to make any super loud noises with the shotgun or VEPR, and didn’t want to use a melee weapon and get too close taking a chance on getting bit despite the leather gloves and heavy clothing I was wearing.

The first house was entirely clear until I reached the master bedroom. Strapped to the bed was an undead woman in pajamas. At one time, she had been a very attractive woman, probably a Sally soccer mom. There was a bite taken out of her right cheek and you could see the bone where the muscle and skin had been ripped away. Apparently, some loved ones had strapped her to the bed and just did not have it in them to end her misery and release her soul. After ensuring the master bath and closets were empty of surprises I fired three quick rounds into her face and terminated her existence.

I exited the house and made my way over to the third house. All the doors and windows were locked and I had to break a windowpane in the kitchen door to make entry. I stood motionless in the kitchen for about three minutes waiting to see if I had attracted any unknown undead inside with the breaking of the windowpane. The clearing of house three went smoothly and quickly and I found nothing inside.

At the second house with the old man, I tapped on the living room window gaining the attention of Methuselah. The old man staggered forward and ran into the window his face pressed against the glass his, jaws snapping as if he thought he could bite his way through the glass to get to me. His fist beat on the glass. I really was not too worried about the glass breaking since the window was new and had a thick double pane. I put one round in his gaping mouth and watched as his knees buckled and his face slide down the glass leaving a smear of gore and flesh that peeled from his face as it slid down the window. The bullet left a small hole in the glass without shattering it.

The front door to house two was unlocked and I entered. I turned to the left into the living room and put one more round into the old man’s head just to be on the safe side. The living room led to a hallway and a second door to my right, which led to the kitchen. I did a quick peek into the kitchen and could see it was clear as well as the dining area beyond it. The hall led to three bedrooms and a bathroom all of which were clear of any undead. I went back to the kitchen area just to be on the safe side and make sure, there was not a mutant midget zombie hiding in a cupboard or something fucked up like that.

A quick search of the cupboards did not locate mutant midget zombies, but I did find a shit load of canned food. I also located a recessed door in a small alcove. I knocked on the door to make a little noise and pressed my ear against it to listen for any noise. I waited about 30 seconds and was rewarded for my patients with the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

I holstered the .22 and pulled the sawed off shotgun from its scabbard. I know I said I wanted to make as little noise as possible and that was why I was using the .22 but I would be damned if I was going to open a door into the unknown with a known threat behind a closed door. My left hand on the doorknob, my right gripping the pistol grip on the gauge, I turned the handle and shoved the door open bringing up the shotgun at the same time.

The door led to a staircase that went down into a pitch-black basement. At the base of the stairs was obese female zombie who was just getting to her feet. She must have fallen while trying to traverse the stairs. From the light coming behind me, I could make out that her stomach had been ripped open and her intestines now withered and dried out hug loosely from the gaping hole. I almost retched from the stink that assaulted me from below. The smell of rotting flesh and shit assailed my senses and I got a bit light headed. I pumped two rounds into her. The first catching her high left in the shoulder and the second obliterating her head.

Just as I began to lower the shotgun a smaller zombie crawled out of the darkness and over the now dead zombie and started to claw its way up the stairs. The third zombie appeared to have been a young girl around 12 years old. She was missing part of her scalp and her left leg just below the hip. I have to tell you I hate killing the kids that have turned. Of course, I also hate the thought of the little bastards digging into my skull and eating my brain like it was some kind of jello pudding pop. I snapped off a round at her. The pellets shredded her left arm off like a wood chipper and sent her tumbling back down onto Francis fat ass down below.

I slammed the door shut and spun around making sure nothing had snuck up on me. The area clear I reloaded the shotgun and holstered it. I have to tell you, there was just no way in hell I was going down in that basement. I am not taking any chances. I want extra food and equipment but I am not in dire straits so I aint putting my ass on the line.

I stacked up all the loot I had recovered from the house by the front door and then went to the window and scanned the area for about fifteen minutes. I just wanted to make sure that firing that shotgun had not attracted any unwanted guess. I was in luck because apparently nothing was heading my way. The basement must have absorbed most of the sound.

After my wait, I went back to house one and three, recovered useful items, and stacked them on the front porch of each house. Once that was done, I fetched the truck and loaded up the truck bed, almost filling it and made my way to town. For some reason, the zombies were few and far between today. It is confusing as hell to me how some days you cannot take a piss without hitting a zombie and others it is almost tranquil out in the world.

About an hour into my search for a living human, I noticed a station wagon with belongings strapped to the roof that had crashed into a telephone pole and someone was behind the wheel moving. I stopped about ten feet away and observed a zombie still strapped in to the driver’s seat with the seat belt. It was a fairly comical watching him as he twisted back looking at me, his arms reaching out of the window towards me. He looked like a zombie with road rage. Yeah I know, it doesn’t sound too funny, but I guess you had to be there.

I reached over in the passenger seat and grabbed one of the solid metal poles that I had sharpened the end to make a crude spear and exited the truck and made my way to him. I approached up along the side of the car, raised the heavy spear, and brought it down in a swift motion breaking the zombie’s arms at the elbows from the force of the blow. I stepped out to the left and followed up by driving the tip of the spear into his eye and out the back of his head.
I backed the truck up to the station wagon so that the bed faced the wagon and spent the next ten minutes unloading everything out of the back of the wagon and then grabbing the items off the top and tossing them into the bed of the truck. I didn’t take time to go through everything I just wanted it loaded and would hope that I got some good stuff out of the deal latter when I took an inventory.

When I was finished, I made my way around the front of the truck and as I placed my hand on the open door and was about to climb in I froze. Lying in the passenger seat was a fucking German shepherd. He sat up and faced me his tongue hanging out of the left side of his mouth as he panted and wagged his tale. The shepherd had a large red collar around his neck so he obviously had belonged to someone at one time.

After staring at each other for a moment, I eased the .45 out of the holster. I was not sure how this was going to end, but it wasn’t going to end with me being Puppy Chow. I called to him, whistled to him and kept telling him to get out of the truck, his response was to just lie down and stare at me. I even went around to the passenger side, opened the door, and tried to get him to get the hell out of the truck.

This little episode went on for around five minutes when he suddenly sat up in the seat and began to growl as he stared out the front window. I turned my head to see what had gotten his attention. Apparently, Rin Tin Tin has a dislike for zombies, because there was one about twenty yards away. I gave a little smile and thought to myself that this could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

I holstered the .45, grabbed my mace, and accommodated the zombie by meeting him half way. However, that was about as accommodating as I got when it came to zombies. I smashed his skull in, wiped gore on my mace off on his suit coat and went back to see my new friend who now didn’t seem to have a care in the world since he was lying back down on the passenger seat.

I moved slowly when I got in the truck and made sure not to make any sudden movements that might upset my new found friend. I think I took our new friendship to a new level when I rolled the passenger side window down. He hung his head out and enjoyed the wind in his hair for the rest of the trip home.
So, that is how this glorious day went. I found extra food and gear and a companion. Not quite, what I was looking for but beggars can’t be choosers. I know I was hoping for something more along the lines of a hot chic with a set of DD’s to ride out the apocalypse with but my new friend seems to like me a lot.
Rommel, that is his name, found a brass plate on the collar with the name inscribed on it, spent most of the rest of the day at the campground running around pissing on trees, and shitting out turds the size of a loaf of bread all over the place. I put Rommel’s age around eight or nine months old. He weighs around 95lbs and his paws seem too big for his body. It looks like he still has some more to grow if his body is going to match the paws.

He also must have been house trained already because twice while I was going through the gear he scratched the door to go outside and use the bathroom. Besides conducting his exploration of the campground and lodge, he has not left my side; I guess he was just as lonely as me. Rommel also seems to be very intelligent despite acting like a total goof ball.

My inventory took a little longer than I expected. I got enough canned food to extend my rations another month and half or so. I got fifteen pounds of sugar, two pounds of salt, five pounds of coffee, assorted hand tools, three sleeping bags, several different sizes of rope in lengths between twenty and seventy five feet, a couple of medium sized first aid kits, several bottles of pain pill, antibiotics, and antibacterial ointments, batteries, flashlights, an oil lamp, four bottles of lamp oil, and some assorted clothing.

The old man in house two owned two bolt guns. One a 30-06, and the other a .243, he had several boxes of ammo for each. I scored a Ruger P95, three mags and one hundred rounds of 9mm out of the station wagon.

Well I guess that about sums up the events for the day. I felt like someone was looking out for me today, guiding me if you will. Whoever it is I hope they keep at it. I am off to hit the rack now and get some shut eye. Hopefully whoever it is that is watching out for me will lay a healing hand on Rommel’s digestive system. He ate three cans of Hormel chili with beans and his farts are enough not only to kill the living but I am sure the undead as well.

[aus.templar]

topic tagged - I'm still reading but don't stop writing

[streetpig1690]

September 2, 2010

I have been negligent in my writing as of late, and I will have to say sorry about that. I have been having a damn good time the past week. Man do I love having my new friend around. Rommel has made life a little easier for me. No, he isn’t chopping wood, maintaining weapons, cooking or cleaning. He isn’t much of a talker, but one hell of a listener. He also is quite entertaining. There is still a lot of puppy in him that is for sure, which makes for some great laughs. Hell just this morning he disobeyed me when I told him to get his nose out of the trash can, a little something we have been working on. He gave me the old fuck you look and promptly got his head stuck in the small plastic garbage can in the kitchen. I let him wonder about the lodge with it stuck on his head for a bit to teach him a lesson. Probably a great lesson for him and was definitely a great laugh for me. However, besides companionship and being good for a few laughs he has been quite helpful.

Before I get into telling, you how he has been helpful let me tell you what I have been up to the past week. I have started hunting for small game not so much for food, but to regain some old hunting skills, such as skinning, gutting and tanning hides. If things don’t get back to normal these skill will be important to survival. I feed Rommel the meat, liver, and hearts for rewards, and the guts I have been using as bait. Since using the animal guts for bait, the fishing has improved.

I built a smoker and a dehydrator and have been using a small bit of the meat that I have not given Rommel and fine tuned my skills in jerking and smoking meat. Also in the food department, I have found some wild grapes, blueberries, and raspberries and have been dehydrating them for the winter. Fruit is important in preventing rickets if I remember correctly and getting needed vitamin C.

I have also started training Rommel. His previous owner obviously had already begun his training since he seemed to have sit, stay, down, and heel down pat. I have added hand signals to these commands so that if silence is necessary the signals will be important. I have also been working on bite training. I had to build a mannequin of sorts so that he can go for arm and leg bites. I made it out of logs that are each about six inches in diameter and used some old moldy blankets I found in one of the cabins to rap the limbs so Rommel doesn’t bust a tooth. I guess bite work is in his genes because he has taken right to it.
Also in his training regime is patrolling. He got an A plus Tuesday and Thursday. On both days, we ran into a stray zombie. I had intended to have Rommel take the individual down by biting the zombie in the leg or arm and pull him down so I could exterminate each with the mace.

However, that did not happen. Rommel obeyed the command to attack but did not bite either one of them. Instead, he hit one low in the legs tripping the zombie up. The second one he leaped in the air and hit the zombie in the chest sending him sprawling. The effect was the same though and I easily killed both. He must sense they are infected somehow and will not sink his teeth into their rancid flesh.

One neat thing about Rommel I have learned is that he does not bark at threats. He just growls or snarls. He does this also when we hunt and he spots game animals. The only time he seems to bark is when we are playing or he wants something I am cooking in the kitchen.

He also seems to hate flies. He will bark, snarl, and growl at them and do his best to catch them. I am gonna have to locate some fly strips somewhere as he has already broke an end table in the lobby area in his attempt to consume his nemesis. So far, he has yet to catch one, but he has a lot of grit and determination and I am sure he will prevail.

In the truck, I have taken out the back seat and built an elevated box that has a lid that opens for storage. Its second function is a place for Rommel to move about so he can stick his head out the window or lay down and sleep when traveling. I liberated some carpet from one of the cabins to place on top of it to give him a better grip when he is standing and a little more comfort when he lays down.

I also managed to get one of the chain saws running down at the maintenance building. I am building a fence around the lodge. It has been slow going in getting it up, but all I have is time. I can’t put them standing on end it would take me years to go that route.

So what I am doing is cutting the trees in fifteen foot lengths. I will stack them length wise to cover more area. To hold them in place I am having to use posthole diggers and a pick to place seven foot long logs on end one on each side of the logs laying length wise. That way I can stack the logs in between each log.

I have thirty feet completed so far. The wall is approximately thirty feet from the lodge. The wall stands about five feet high. Any higher than that and it gets pretty damn hard for me to man handle the logs up. I have found a large pulley but have not taken the time to build a tripod so that I can easily lift the logs up.

I know that a normal person could just climb over it but I am looking at it as a barrier against zombies. At five feet in height, I will be able to look over the wall and shoot over it. I am going to have to get busy on this thing before winter sets in. I am going to need my energy just to survive not waste it on a building project.

I have already dug the holes out and cut down all the trees I will need and pulled them on site with the truck. Lucky for me the hardwoods here have grown straight and tall. I am going to locate more barbed wire to place on the top of the wall. Maybe that will slow down any living people that might be a threat. If I can’t find any, I will just find a farm and take it from a fence row.

Looking my place over I realize I am going to need defense in layers since I am alone and will need time to respond to threats. I already have that on the lodge with the barricaded porches and then the barricaded stairs. The fence will be an additional layer but I need another to prevent zombies from stacking up on the fence or living people attacking me using the wall as cover. If I can find a backhoe or decent size dozer, I may just dig a ditch about eight feet wide and five or six feet deep just on the outside of the wall.

I think a ditch with these dimensions will be a significant barrier to the dead who do not seem that agile. If they get into the ditch the will be unable to get out and I can kill them at my leisure. With about a foot between wall and the ditch living people will not have enough room to maneuver or take cover behind the wall.

You know, the more I think about it the more I like the idea. I know there is a backhoe at the construction site where I got the truck, but that is about six miles away. I will have to drive over there and see if I can’t get it started. If it works, which there is no reason it shouldn’t, I will have to bring the truck back here and either hike there or maybe find a bicycle to make the journey in a more timely manner. Come to think of it, there was a ten speed bike at one of the houses I cleared out in the cul-de-sac. I think tomorrow I will head over and get the bike, and then go check the backhoe out. If I start early enough, maybe about 5:00am, I can get the backhoe back before sunset.

Sounds like a plan. I will let you know how it turns out. I am gonna go get me and Rommel some grub and hit the sack. I have a long day tomorrow.

[streetpig1690]

September 3, 2010

I skipped my workout this morning so I could get an early start. Rommel and I had a quick breakfast of rabbit stew and grapes then we were on our way to the construction site as the sun started to peak over the trees. I made good time and saw no zombies on the way to the cul-de-sac. I pulled into the cul-de-sac and shut the engine down in front of the first house.

I saw no movement as Rommel and I got out of the truck. Rommel was relaxed and I could tell from his body language nothing threatening was around. Well I hoped nothing was. So far, Rommel has been 100% when it comes to sensing danger.

We made our way to the second house and entered and I made my way towards the kitchen where the door to the garage was. Just before we entered, Rommel froze, a low growl emitting from his throat. We slowly entered the kitchen and Rommel froze his eyes boring holes into the door to the basement. I told Rommel to heel and follow me. He was quite reluctant to but he did so, his head constantly looking back over his shoulders as we made our way to the garage. Obviously there were still one or more zombies alive down there, not that I would be going to check it out anytime soon.

The garage was dimly lit by the early morning sun coming through the window, but it helped me spot the bike in the back corner of the garage. I pulled a tarp that partially covered the bike off and threw it to the floor, and before me sat my new self propelled chariot. The tires were full of air, and the chain in place. The downer of the whole situation was that the bike was a woman’s bike. Not that I am complaining about having to ride a woman’s bike, but it was the aesthetics that got me. The bicycle had to have been from the 70’s. It had large white wall tires the big ape hanger like handle bars and a banana seat. To top it all off the damn thing was totally pink and had those pompoms looking streamers hanging from the end of the handle bars. Oh, and it had one of those damn florescent orange flag things on a whip stick about five feet long on the back.

Now beggars cannot be choosers, but shit, I was going to have to ride this thing. I had to pause for a moment and pray to the dear Lord that I wouldn’t run into any other survivors while riding this thing. Hell can you imagine someone’s reaction to seeing a grown man riding a pink bike with ape hangers armed to the teeth during the end of the world. Shit, they will probably just smoke me just to be on the safe side without having to worry about some crazy fuck on a pink bike murdering them.

Oh well, what the fuck were the chances of me seeing anyone besides zombies anyway. I have not seen a soul since August or so. I grabbed the bicycle from Hell and Rommel and I made our way back outside. Once outside I decided to give my new ride a whirl. It took a bit of doing to get used to riding the thing, I mean it has been about twenty five years since I have rode a bike. But, once I got going, I really got going.

Rommel really seemed to enjoy watching me and running along beside me. I gave him the heel command and he stayed right along side of me without deciding to rip the tires off the bike. My test run over, I loaded up the bike in the truck and got in and headed for the construction site.

The construction site was devoid of zombies. I exited the truck with Rommel at my side, his head turned like it was on a swivel. I could see he was tense but he wasn’t growling. I guess the stench from the rotting corpses of zombies I had killed earlier was getting him worried. I hoped that the stench coming from the corpses wouldn’t hinder Rommel from smelling the living undead (Hmm, that doesn’t sound right but I will go with it).

The backhoe was where I last saw it. We made our way over and I opened the door to the cab and climbed in. I looked down and saw that Rommel wasn’t doing his usual search of an area looking for the best place to drop one of his loaf turds for me to step in. Rommel was really worried and that meant that I needed to get this rig running and get the hell out of here.

The keys were hanging off of the turn signal lever. I snatched the keys off and put them in the ignition. With a quick prayer, I turned the ignition. The big Cat 315 DL turned over and blue smoke bellowed from the stack. I quickly tested the controls and made sure everything was operating. Once satisfied I drove the Cat over to my truck and shut her down.

I jumped out and grabbed a five gallon jug of diesel fuel from the back of the truck. It was then that I heard Rommel starting to growl. I looked over at him and he was pacing back and forth looking first left at the tree line then right towards a small building one hundred or so yards away. Well whatever had him nervous had not made it out in the open yet so I chose to fuel the Cat.

Just as I finished emptying the fuel jug Rommel started to snarl and moved towards the wood line as three zombies moved into the open. Rommel kept looking at me over his shoulder and back at the zombies, his feet moving up and down as if trotting in place in anticipation for the attack command.
I tossed the fuel jug into the bed of the truck and jumped down to the cab of the truck and grabbed the VEPR. Coming around the Cat I first looked right towards the building and saw two more zombies coming from that direction. I snapped off seven rounds in their direction as I moved towards Rommel. Two of my rounds made contact with one of the zombies. I could see my rounds impact as the bullets struck his filthy clothing causing puffs of dirt to burst off his clothing like small explosions. The rounds wouldn’t kill him but they did drop him to the ground. As he struggled to get back up the second tripped over him, the two going down in a pile of twisted limbs. I wasn’t worried about noise now. When I started the Cat up I am sure the roar of its engine echoed to hell and back.

As I came to Rommel’s side I commanded him to attack. As he began his charge towards the nearest zombie I fired my rifle at the farthest zombie about thirty five yards away. One round struck the zombie in the left side of the chest. The second round struck him in the head sending him toppling to the ground.
As I scanned left with my rifle at the low ready I saw Rommel hit the second zombie from behind. The first was already on the ground and struggling to get up. Rommel must have hit him and then after going past the second turned and attacked the second. The second one’s leg flew out from underneath him when Rommel hurtled into his leg and he slammed to the ground. I whistled to Rommel and gave him the command to post, and stand beside me. There was a little hesitation to obey but he controlled his urge to attack and posted to my side. Once he was out of the line of fire I rapidly fired two double taps to each zombies head.

We turned back to the two other zombies who had managed to struggle to their feet and continue on towards us. I leaned over the hood of the truck and took careful aim. My first shot struck the first zombie on the right cheek blowing the back of his head out, the bullet and bits of brain striking the second zombie in the left shoulder after it exited number one’s head.

The first fell and the second stumbled as the round hit him. Two more rounds and the second zombie fell dead as his head erupted in a fountain of blood and brains. I scanned the area and turned to look to my rear to see Rommel taking down another zombie that had made his way up behind us from somewhere.
Rommel knocked him to the ground and circled to my side as I walked the rounds from my AK up her body. The rounds eviscerated her body and head. One last scan of the area and checking Rommel who sat on his haunches panting and relaxed, convinced me we were safe for that moment. First chance I get to kill a deer or cow Rommel is getting a damned big steak, hell maybe two.

I did a quick reload and stuffed the half empty magazine in the dump pouch. Slinging the rifle I grabbed the last jug of diesel out of the bed and took it to the Cat. After topping off the tank I yelled to Rommel to get in the truck. I wasn’t far behind and we were soon on the way back to the lodge.

I had done pretty good and was back at the lodge before seven. Now came the hard part. I was going to have to ride the bike back to the construction site, get the Cat and drive it home. First things first though. I was going to have to download the VEPR and take the mag pouches off of my vest carrier. I was going to travel light and didn’t want the extra weight of the VEPR and all of the magazines and ammo that entailed.

Up in the armory I snagged the Ruger 9mm and the three 15 round magazines. I decided against the M&P because I had not fired it to test if it was functioning properly. I felt with the sawed off shotgun, .45, 9mm, and my hideout revolver I was armed (yes, once again I give you a fine example of a paranoid country boy traveling light) well enough to make it to the backhoe and back. I decided that besides being armed I need to fuel my body so Rommel and I had a couple of cans of beef stew. I grabbed four more cans and threw them in my assault pack in case I wound up stuck out there somewhere for a day or two.

Fed, hydrated and geared up with my kit I mounted my hideous bicycle and began my journey. About one mile into the trip Rommel ran forward and in front of my bike and began to slow. I hadn’t taught Rommel this little trick, but I took the hint, something was ahead. I dismounted from the bike and put the kick stand down.

Just ahead a zombie was walking down the driveway of a house and into the street towards us. I waited till the zombie was about ten feet away before I released Rommel. Rommel knocked him off his feet and I closed in mace in hand. Unlike at the construction site I didn’t want to make any noise at all. The fewer zombies the better, I would be totally fucked if I ran into another hoard and my only means of escape was the bike.

As the zombie began to rise off his back I slammed my heavy boot in his chest tearing rotting flesh off with the thick lugs of my boot sole and pinned him to the ground as his hands wrapped around my lower leg. I raised the mace and sunk it into his face killing him. The mace made a sucking sound as I pulled it out of the baseball sized hole in his head.

Obstacle destroyed I mounted up on my hog, yes I am now calling my pink bike a hog, and headed on. As I journeyed on I kept my eyes out for threats and also possible houses to search. I had to be careful on where and when I was going to search houses. I was by myself, and though I had Rommel, Rommel couldn’t give first aid or carry me home if I broke a leg or something.

We were about within about a quarter of a mile from the construction site when I heard the first gunshot. It sounded like a lighter rifle caliber. As I slowed to a stop to listen and scan the area for danger I heard four more quick cracks from the report of the weapon being fired. Definitely a semi-auto of some sort, my guess was an AR variant or maybe an AK-74, the Russians answer to the M-16 that replaced the AK-47.

Rommel’s full attention was forward towards the sound of the fight. Damn I love this dog. He is still just an overgrown pup and he loves to get in the fight. Rommel will be a force to be reckoned with when he is full grown and matures.

I had three different options. Ride towards the fight, assisting whoever was in trouble, and hopefully he or she wasn’t a thieving murdering bastard who would kill me after the fight was over. I could turn around and go home and wait for another day when less danger was in the way. Or I could take a different route totally avoiding the fight and continue on with reaching my goal. Of course with the third option more zombies would be attracted to the area due to the gunfire and still putting me into more danger.

After pausing in thought for several seconds Rommel helped make the decision. If my partner in crime was anticipating the fight and ready to go I was going to take his lead. Hell so far he has been like a good luck charm to me so I was up for it.

Decision made I gave the order to Rommel to heel and pedaled on towards the battle, my florescent orange battle flag whipping in the wind above me (Yeah, I know. Real fucking cheesy but I am writing a journal about my experiences through this apocalypse. I would like to be remembered in a more warrior like fashion. I mean how would it sound to those of you who read this in the distant future if I wrote something like; I pedaled my little legs off on my cute pink bike towards the sound of battle.).

After riding about two hundred yards I came over the crest of a hill I skidded the bike to a halt. Not fifty yards away was a woman reloading what appeared to be an Armalite AR-180B, three dead zombies at her feet. Yes I do know my weapons, I am a country boy after all. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the AR-180B it is a weapon designed by Stoner. It is a piston operated (Like the AK ) semi-auto rifle that is very light weight, reliable and takes the M-16 magazine.

The woman seemed confident and sure of herself if I was reading her body language right. She definitely knew how to reload the rifle in a rapid familiar manner. She was dressed in what appeared to be German flectar camo pants, a black leather jacket (good idea. The leather would stop a human bight. I wish I would have thought of that.). Worn over the jacket was on older style load bearing vest. On her back she wore a backpack similar to my three day assault pack that had become so popular just before the zombie apocalypse. From what I could tell she had a very athletic body under her close fitting clothing. There was a red ball cap on her head and a jet black ponytail hung out the back. From the distance I was at she appeared to be in her early twenties.

Apparently Rommel was getting good vibes from her as his body seemed relaxed and no growl could be heard emanating from his throat. It was about the time I had looked back up from checking Rommel out that I noticed she was looking at me, her rifle at the low ready, definitely experienced rifle shooter with some training. I slowly raised my hand and waved. Now was the moment of truth. Would she freak out and smoke my ass or would she call me forward?
She made the right choice and the right tactical decision. She side stepped behind an abandon car and took a knee peering around the front end. She yelled to me who the hell are you. I told her my name and asked if I could come forward. She agreed and told me to ride forward slowly and to keep the dog under control or she would shoot us both.

I slowed to a stop and gave her my best smile and a hello. Rommel gave a helping paw with a friendly bark his tail wagging and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. The woman, who upon closer inspection was in her early thirties but still a very eye-catching woman despite being sweaty and dirty, gave Rommel a smile and back to me with a what the fuck look.

I told her my name again and she told me her name was Samantha Pritchard. She asked me what the hell was up with the pink bike and I explained what I was doing. She gave a little laugh and said I looked damn silly riding a pink bike. I let out my own chuckle and told her I would love to chat more but the gunfire was probably going to draw in more zombies.

About the time I said that Rommel pushed past Samantha snarling. I drew my .45 and Samantha spun bringing up the AR-180. Coming from an alleyway were a dozen or so of the undead. Samantha methodically fired her weapon taking down three undead with accurate well placed shots. Rommel was raring to go, but I ordered him to stay by my side. Though Samantha was firing accurately I did not want a stray round to hit my dog.

I snapped off two quick rounds striking a zombie in the chest and midsection causing his rotting flesh to burst open, and his intestines spilling to the ground. I yelled to Samantha to come with me as I looked behind us only to see more zombies heading our way. I jumped on the bike and took my pack off slinging it across the handle bars by the straps. After firing two more rounds and dropping two more zombies she turned to look at me and cocked her head to the side and said something along the lines of “You have got to be shitting me?” But looking at the additional zombies coming from behind she let out a disgusted sigh and jumped on board.

I started off a bit wobbly but once I gained up some momentum I straightened the bike out and quickly put some distance between the zombies and the three of us. Not far down the road Samantha leaned forward over my shoulder and said we had to be the goofiest looking pair of survivors in the country and that she prayed no one she knew was alive to see us. I gave a laugh and told her I had uttered the same prayer when leaving the lodge.

There were just a few zombies coming toward us from the direction of the construction site, drawn by the gunfire, but we easily avoided them. Once at the construction site we jumped off the bike and I entered the big Cat and cranked her up. Getting back out I took the foam sleeping roll off my pack and climbed on the back of the backhoe and rolled it out. I told her if she was coming with me she would have to ride on the back with Rommel.

She stretched her arm out to me and I took hold of her and helped her up on the back. I jumped down and picked Rommel up and managed to get him on the back with Samantha. I told him to lay down and stay before getting back in the cab of the backhoe.

The first part of the journey back to the lodge was a gruesome spectacle of crushed bodies, blood and guts. Portions of some streets we traversed were painted red with the blood of the zombies crushed beneath the treads of the backhoe. At one point a zombie’s intestines got hooked by something on the belly of the Cat and stretched out almost 30 yards behind us before falling free. It took a good two hours to make it the six miles back to the lodge, we were exhausted but alive and injury free.

Samantha seemed really impressed with what I had accomplished and stated that she had wished she had done something similar instead of trying to make it home to Ohio and living day to day with the eminent threat of death day and night. I told her I could understand her desire to get home, and that I had planned the same thing but was waiting till the undead hopefully thinned out.

I then took her to the lounge area where the big fireplace was and told her she could bunk there. She gave me a smile and told me she was really going to enjoy sleeping somewhere safe for a change but how much better it would be with a bath and clean clothes.

She inquired if there was a stream or lake nearby that she could bathe and wash her clothes in. I told her I could do her one better and that I could heat some water up and she could take a shower and that I would wash her clothes for her while she bathed. A worried look came across her face and I knew what she was thinking.

I told her I would grab her some pants and a shirt that would probably fit her from the clothes I got out of the station wagon. She relaxed a bit and a smile crept across her face. I went to heat the water up while she headed to one of the downstairs bathroom.

While I turned on the electric water pump (powered by the solar powered batteries for those of you who must know), and turned on the propane heater for the water tank Samantha unpacked her clothes. She didn’t have much. What she handed me was just a couple of extra thick long sleeve shirts, socks, and a pair of heavy duty work pants. I smiled to myself as she handed me the clothes. Unfortunately no frilly thong panties, but she obviously was a sensible woman looking at her clothing selection. Also I guess she was going to wash her bras and panties herself. Another smile to myself as I thought maybe she was going commando like me. I know you are probably thinking I am some kind of pervert, but I really could not help thinking about her. I was a lonely, despite Rommel, and she really was a beautiful woman. I believe the term many of the younger generation use is MILF. If you don’t know find out from someone else what it means.

Twenty minutes later I could hear a beautiful voice singing in the shower as I approached the door to pick up the clothing she had stripped off and left for me to wash. I couldn’t make out exactly what Samantha was singing but I leaned my head against the bathroom door, closed my eyes, and rejoiced in the fact that I had a human companion. I didn’t know if she would stay or go, but I intended to enjoy her company and the fact that I wasn’t the only living soul in the area.

I used a large industrial sized aluminum cooking kettle and liquid dish soap to wash Samantha’s clothing. I had finished washing them and hanging them on the clothes line that I had set up on the back deck before starting on my own sweat stained clothes after putting on a pair of gym shorts I had upstairs in my bedroom.

I had finished washing and hanging everything before Samantha had exited the bathroom. She looked beautiful sweaty and wearing dirt stained clothes, but coming out of the bathroom, even with clothing that was a two sizes too big, clean and wearing a huge smile she looked absolutely stunning to me.

I took my turn in the shower making it a quick one, eager to get back to Samantha and revel in her company. By the time I got out of the shower and made my way through the lobby area I could smell something delicious coming from the kitchen. I entered the kitchen to see Samantha humming a little tune to herself and cooking something over the stove. Rommel stood by her side looking up at her with his big plastic food bowl clenched in his teeth, his muzzle covered in some sort of sauce, his tail wagging.

Over dinner we told each other our stories. I started with mine and then she began to tell me hers. She said she had taken a couple of week’s vacation from her job as a pharmaceutical rep and been up here visiting her brother and sister in law when the shit hit the fan. They had managed to hole up in her brother’s house for the first month or so without being noticed by the zombies.

Her brother had been into prepping for shit hit the fan scenarios but was not overly zealous about it. He and his wife had about four months worth of food, medical supplies, a small arsenal of weapons, and a moderate amount of ammunition. Then one night her brother had gone out to do a bit of scavenging for some needed items that might make life a little easier.

He had returned out of breath, and clothing dirty and torn. He had told them that he had not been careful enough and had encountered a large number of zombies. He then hit them with a bombshell and said he had been bitten on the forearm.

He told his wife she knew what she had to do. He kissed Sam (I now know she prefers to be called that.) and told her he loved her and took his wife by the hand and led her to the garage as he pulled out a pistol and handed it to her. Sam said she didn’t know how long she sat on the couch crying but after awhile she heard her sister in law screaming, and then silence.

It took Sam a good twenty minutes before she had worked up the courage to pick up her .38 revolver and open the door leading to the garage. What she saw, she said still haunts her dreams. Her brother was on his knees leaned over his wife’s stomach shoving her guts into his mouth. She watched him gorge on his wife for a good minute before he noticed her. When he did he stood up and began to come to her arms outstretched and jaws snapping showering small droplets of blood on the concrete floor, ready to devour her.

She said she then shot him and then her sister in law before she reanimated. The two gun shots must have been heard by the zombies that had been after her brother. They beat on the doors and boarded up windows in an attempt to get in the house.

Sam said this went on for almost three days before it stopped, and they either were drawn away by something else, or had just plain gave up on getting in the house. She said the banging almost drove her crazy and she had to keep herself from putting something in her ears to block out the noise. She knew she had to be able to hear if they broke in the house.

After two more days in the house she said the stench from her brother’s and sister in law’s bodies had become overwhelming and she just had to leave. She said the AR-180 had belonged to her brother along with the pack and LBV, but he had purchased one for her a couple of years earlier for Christmas and taught her to use it. Taking those items and packing up food, ammo and water she headed out. She had lived by moving from house to house, scavenging food where she could find it trying to make her way home to Ohio until the day she met Rommel and me.

We discussed what plans we both had for getting home. Sometime later we decided we would team up together and hold up here at the lodge until things got better. Then when the time came we would travel together until we had to separate and go our separate ways. The other option was to travel together to Ohio and see if any of her family was left alive. If not, she would travel with me to Alabama. Of course we would wait and see about this option to see if we were compatible or not. If we turned out not being able to stand one another option one would be the plan.

With her story told Sam fell asleep curled up in a ball on the couch. I stood up from the recliner and took the large afghan off the back of the chair and covered her up, picked up her AR-180 off the floor and placed it on the coffee table within easy reach for her.

Pretty damn eventful day if I do say so myself. Rommel, without a doubt has been my good luck charm. If that puppy dies I am going to cut off his feet and use them like one would use a rabbit’s foot like some superstitious fool. Yeah I know that sounds a bit morbid, but hell, it is a morbid world now.

[fourpaws]

Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Miles where are you !!! Awesome read.. Im hooked !! MOAR MOAR !!

[wile e. coyote]

I am really getting into this story!! I know this is on AUD but I read here since the forum makes it easier to spot updates! Anyway I need some

MOAR

[streetpig1690]

September 7, 2010

Note to self, “Locate hand lotion!” Yeah I know it is a weird way to start an entry into the journal after five days of no writing. However, I need a ton of it tonight. Sam and I just got done with one of the most awesome, heavy make out sessions of the apocalypse. As I am sure this has come as a big of a shock to you as it did for us. Heck just five days ago she was taking a bath with her AR 180 and pistol because she wasn’t sure she could trust me yet. But shared danger between people builds strong bonds quickly as it has with the case between the two of us.

All right, I will rewind a bit and tell you how I got to the point of needing to find a semi-truck load of lotion from Bath and Body Works as if I was some kid who just discovered the pleasures only a guy can give himself with his own hand. This is going to be a short entry since I have an extremely pressing matter to take in hand and resolve. Wipe that disgusted look off your face. If you had seen Sam with just a towel on and a few other tantalizing tidbits coupled with a little love action, you would not even be sitting here reading this. You would probably be in a locked bathroom somewhere beating your helmeted one eyed love warrior to death.

On our second day together Sam and I spent it mostly getting to know one another a little better, talking about our past lives and even a few hopes we had for the future. I did discover Sam is quite the outdoor survival specialist. She chastised me a bit when I shot a rabbit with my .22 pistol while we were out walking the campgrounds. She said not only was it a waste of a bullet but it would scare other game away.

She led me deeper into the woods and pulled her hatchet, knife and some 550-parachute cord out of her pack. An hour later she had fashioned three small dead falls and set one on three different game trails. She all but guaranteed at least one dead small animal for a meal the next morning. I was damned amazed about how skilled she seemed to be doing this and told her so.

Sam said on her sixteenth birthday her father had taken her to a two-week outdoor woodlands survival school in Tennessee. After the school she said she had fallen in love with primitive camping and hunting and been to some sort of outdoors survival school at least every other year ever since.

If she is as good as she appears to be I am going to be learning a lot about woodland survival in the near future from her. Also our supply of meat will definitely increase enabling us to jerk a lot more meat for the coming winter. We spent the rest of the afternoon going over what outdoor skills I had and making a list of things she could help me improve on. And here I was thinking I was the great white hunter. I was pretty good in the outdoors but she was a hell of a lot better when it came to primitive outdoor survival.

The next morning I woke up and started my calisthenics. Sam woke up, came outside after I was about fifteen minutes into my workout, and joined me. She was wearing a pair of tight shorts her hiking boots and a t-shirt. Not a good thing for a man who has not seen a woman in a couple of months to see, I definitely had to keep my mind on my workout to keep certain muscles from filling with blood. Rommel had no such qualms. He ran to her tail wagging, and red rocket protruding. He was just excited to see her as I was.

Sam was in good physical condition but months of being cooped up in a house and then scavenging for food had left her a bit weak. She also said she had not worked out in a couple of years. I worked with her, teaching her my routine and explaining why I did each exercise.

Next was my melee weapons training which Sam joined in with as well. Sam had no experience in hand-to-hand weapons. So we focused on knife fighting and she practiced with a 24-ounce roofing hammer I had picked up out of the maintenance shop to use on my barricades. Sam was a quick learner. She was not a pro after four hours but she could at least handle the knife and hammer with some skill.

After lunch we checked her traps to find a rabbit and we reset the trap. She was beaming with pride and gave me one of those “I told you so looks”. I fought back against her smugness by allowing her to skin and clean the animal. We then checked my automatic reels to find two large catfish, reset the reels and cleaned the fish and prepped them for supper later in the day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on teaching Sam how to properly clear a house. We used one of the vacant cabins first. I taught and she followed my instructions. We then started learning to work as a team. Once she seemed to have a good grasp on the concepts we moved to the lodge and I taught her stair procedures, and how to properly clear a large structure.

The following day was pretty much like the last. We did move her traps to a different area of the woods so we would not trap out that section. We came back with two more rabbits and these were stripped, cleaned, and prepped to be jerked. We also tested the M&P 9mm. The weapon seemed to be in good working order and Sam replaced her .38 with the weapon.

Sam turned out to be a pretty good marksman with the pistol so we did not need a lot of training in that area. We mostly worked on her magazine changes till she became proficient at it. The Rangers gun belt was a little big on her so we modified it by adding a couple of more holes in the belt so she could strap it on her waist properly. I then began to instruct her on the four-point draw method.

At the end of the day after both of us had taken a hot shower we had left over catfish. Over dinner Sam suggested that the next day we head back to her brother’s house and clear it of food and weapons that were left there. It seemed like a good idea and the two of us working as a team in a real life or death scenario would help improve our teamwork. I know we had only a couple of days of house clearing training together but properly learning to clear a house was not rocket science, it just takes a lot of repetition to get it ingrained in the brain.

We woke up fairly early this morning and had a hearty breakfast before gearing up. Once we were geared up Sam and I practiced room clearing for about thirty minutes to make sure she had it down pat and work out any questions she had. The added bonus of having Rommel in our little stack is his keen knack for detecting danger. Even though we have him I don’t want to be slack while clearing rooms in case his internal zombie detector fails us.

Sam’s brother’s house is on the far side of city and we planned on taking a route that would skirt the outer boundaries of the city. About halfway to our destination I had managed to avoid quite a few small and large groups of zombies without incident. I had been rehearsing the clearing process of the house in my mind occasionally glancing at the diagram that Sam had drawn indicating where furniture was located and where the most important items were. I slowed to take a turn and spotted a single zombie about thirty feet away walking towards us.

I looked over at Sam and asked her if she wanted to try out her hammer. She gave me a smile and told me to stop as she pulled her hammer out. Rommel and I exited also, me with my rifle at the low ready scanning for trouble and Rommel standing there eagerly anticipating the command to attack.

Sam took a few practice swings with the hammer as she approached the zombie. She moved with deadly determination her body tensed and ready to spring into mortal combat. Almost within reaching distance Sam sidestepped left and as the zombie lurched towards her arms outstretched to bring her into a deadly embrace she and she stepped back to the right. As she got even with his left side she swung the hammer hitting him just behind the left ear sending the zed staggering and down on his right knee. Sam then struck with her booted foot into the center of his back driving him to the ground followed up by the death swing to the back of his head crushing the skull, driving shards of it into the brain.

Wiping off the gore on the back of the zed’s shirt she looked up and smiled asking what I thought. I told her she had done an awesome job and I that she had one more to kill. Hurriedly looking around she spotted a second zombie about forty feet away. She began to head towards it until I told her to wait and try it out with Rommel.

She came and stood next to me waiting for the zombie to approach. As it neared I explained the commands and hand signals to her. Shaking her head in the affirmative that she got it she ordered Rommel to post. To my pleasure Rommel did not move. He looked up at me and waited till I gave him a pat on the head and pointed to Sam’s side. Sam gave a quick scolding to Rommel telling him he was a sorry bastard and would get no more scraps from her plate or treats while she cooked dinner. I gave out a burst of laughter and tried to cut it off as she gave me a dirty look and said there would be no treats for me either. What a lie that turned out to be.

As the zombie reached closer Sam gave Rommel the attack command. Rommel never hesitated. Charging forward and building speed he leapt from the ground and struck the woman’s outstretched arm. Rommel’s powerful jaws clamped down on her wrist, causing her body to spin out of control and slam to the ground as he went past her and released her arm. Sam trotted forward with the hammer raised for the strike. As the woman rose up Sam brought the hammer down striking the woman just above the right eye caving the front of the skull in and at the same time causing the eyeball to pop from the socket. Needless to say a second follow up strike wasn’t necessary.

Back in the truck Sam was really full of herself. Apparently she had not had to go hands on with a zombie since the beginning. She was really pleased with how easy it was with Rommel at her side. For me personally I was extremely pleased that her melee cherry had been busted with positive results. Now hopefully she would not freeze up if she had to go hand to hand. Of course I would attempt to see how she could do against two or three zombies on her own if it could be done safely enough at a later date.

The area around her brother’s neighborhood seemed to be devoid of any zombies when we arrived. We exited the truck and made our way inside. Though Rommel gave off no warning signs we still cleared the house. Sam refused to go into the garage so Rommel and I cleared it ourselves. I about lost my lunch entering into the garage the stink was so bad but I managed to clear it. I pulled the emergency release on the garage door and lifted it about two feet off the ground to air it out. Looking around I found a couple of tarps and covered the bodies.

Sam and I began grabbing everything we could. I will have to say one thing about her brother; the guy sure knew how to pack and store gear and equipment. Everything was labeled and accessible. We used two dollies he had specifically to haul gear. The bed of the truck was full and there were still plenty of things left inside. I think Sam was mistaken about her brother’s prepping status; the guy was really into it, hell he must have lived for the day the shit was going to hit the fan.

I told her we would have to come back later and then Sam slapped her forehead. She said she had totally forgotten the sixteen-foot dual axel trailer in the back right next to the gate. I jumped into the truck and Sam ran around and opened the gate. I backed the truck to the gate and we quickly got the trailer attached and moved out front to the driveway.

Though we were tired from all the loading we both seemed to get a little bit of more energy just because we were going to be able to get everything in one trip. About halfway through the loading process with the trailer Mr. Murphy decided he would make an entrance.

I am not sure which one of us did it and it doesn’t really matter, but the front door was left open and both of us were inside. We were in one of the back bedrooms loading some ammo cans onto the dolly when Rommel went apeshit. Rommel came backing into the bedroom growling and snarling, drool oozed down both sides of his jaws.

Drawing my pistol I passed Rommel and almost ran right smack into a fucking zombie. My pistol was raised halfway at waist level as I brought it up and stuck it under the zeds chin and squeezed the trigger painting the ceiling with his brains. I shoved his body backwards as he collapsed into two more right behind him slowing them down and giving me enough time to shoot both in the head.

Three more were in the hallway and another coming around the corner. I advanced towards them stepping on the bodies as I moved forward. Once past the bodies and on level ground again I emptied the 1911 sending the thumb sized slugs into their brains and loaded another magazine. Holstering I drew the shotgun and moved to the doorway of the living room.

Holy fuck and pass the ketchup! The living room was full of zombies and two more were coming through the front door. I started cranking out 00 buck at head level blowing four of the bastards back to hell and running the gauge dry. As I slid the shotgun into its scabbard I began to draw my pistol and suddenly felt like my head was exploding as Sam started firing her AR 180 right by my head as she began dropping zeds left and right.

She screamed at me to grab my rifle that was now mysteriously leaning right by the doorway. Sam must have brought it with her when she came down the hall. Holstering the pistol I snatched up the VEPR and got into the fight as Sam began to advance forward into the living room methodically firing her rifle. I don’t know if you have ever fired a rifle indoors, but holy fuck it is loud.

I fired my rifle so fast you would have thought I was on full auto as we cleared the living room and headed for the front door. I guess we both mentally decided shutting the door was not an option. We had to fight our way outside and clear the exterior so we could make our escape.

I was first turning right as I exited the door, Sam followed turning left. We both dropped two zeds apiece on the front porch. There was really only one way for the zeds to get on the porch and that was up two steps to the opening between the iron railings around the porch.

We stood side by side at the steps with the sun beating down on us as we blazed away. I was down to my last rifle mag as the last zombie died in the front yard. Sam and I both were panting for breath as if we had just sprinted a hundred yards; our bodies were soaked with sweat. The barrel of Sam’s rifle glowed a dull red. To say that thing was hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock would be an understatement. I estimate that we had killed close to eighty or ninety zombies inside and out. That doesn’t say a lot for our marksmanship, but when the shit has hit the fan, a shit pot of lead down range counts for a hell of a lot.

I told her to get in the truck because we sure as hell had to get out of there. Sam just basically said, “Fuck that we need that ammo.” She was right of course. We by no means had put a huge dent in our overall ammo stocks located back at the lodge, but ammo wasn’t being made anymore and it sure didn’t grow on trees. I had her stand guard out front while I shuttled ammo can after ammo can from the bedroom to the truck. It might not have been so bad if I hadn’t been trying to maintain my balance as I carried my load over the corpses of the dead.

The ammo loaded we jumped in the truck and headed the hell out of dodge. It was a damn good thing too. Zombies seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. I don’t know where the hell they were on the way in but they were sure as hell here now. Maybe they belonged to some zombie union shop and were on break when we got there. The union must have been throwing out some double time now because those bastards were ready to get a piece of our asses.

The drive home consisted of me dodging the hordes of zombies that had appeared. I ran as few as possible over not wanting to damage the truck or blow a tire. I think if we had broke down it would have been the end of us. I just don’t see how we could have managed to get away on foot there were so many zombies out hunting for the living.

By the time we got back to the lodge my head felt like it was going too exploded. Sam’s rifle shot didn’t burst my eardrum but it came dame close. We spent an hour unloading the truck and just stacking the gear in the lobby area. Once we were done I stripped off my vest and shirt and Sam took my rifle telling me to get a hot shower. While I was in the shower Sam had slipped in and placed a glass of water and several pills by the sink. I took the pills and dried off and went to the lobby area and sat back on one of the leather sofa and closed my eyes.

I heard Sam head towards the shower and about twenty minutes later as I was drifting off to sleep Sam woke me. She was wrapped only in a large white towel and she started to get on the couch as she told me to lean forward and move up. She worked in behind me, one long tanned leg on each side of me as she began to massage my head and shoulders.

After a few minutes of this she leaned over to my good ear and whispered a thank you for taking her in and giving her a shot at a new life. Then she started to gently kiss my neck wrapping her arms around my chest, her hands roving up and down. I am not one to kiss and tell but I will say that things got really hot and steamy and I think I busted the zipper on my jeans.

So that pretty much sums up my day. I now officially believe I have a woman who wants me, we got a ton of gear (I will let you know what we got later after we inventory), my eardrum almost exploded, and now I think the head of my dick is about to explode and leave quite the mess on the ceiling.

[streetpig1690]

September 9, 2010

Sorry about skipping yesterday’s journal entry. I know I said I would go into some detail about what we got from Sam’s brother’s house but something happened. I am not sure how to explain this as it has me worried and a bit confused about what it all means. Sometime during the night or early morning I had the most realistic dream. Quite frankly it has scared the shit out of me. I worried about it all day yesterday and only slept a few hours last night thinking about what it all means.

On the night of the seventh, I fell into the deepest sleep I have had since all this shit has started. I found myself walking down a long dark hallway towards a door. Bright light emitted from underneath the door. I opened the door and stepped into a very brightly lit white room. I couldn’t see the walls, but for some reason I felt as if I was in a fairly small room. My father sat in his old battered leather chair smoking his pipe. I could smell the familiar sweet aroma of his pipe as smoke twisted its way around his head flowing from the bowl.

My dad looked at peace and smiled when I walked in and pointed with his pipe to a small wooden rocking chair that sat before him. He told me to have a seat and that we needed to talk. The weird thing was it was the rocking chair I had when I was a small boy. I used to sit in it beside my father’s chair at night and he would read books to me or tell me stories of his days in the Marines. He also used to make me sit down in the chair and listen to him when he decided something was very important. I didn’t say a word I just sat down in the chair and started rocking as I did when I was a boy. I am not sure how my big ass fit in it, but it was if I had shrunk down to the size of a six or seven year old kid. Hell I must have because in my peripheral vision I could see I was wearing my favorite pair of brown corduroy pants and the same damn dirty black canvas Converse high top basketball shoes I had in first grade.

My dad was never a very affectionate man but I always knew he loved me, I could see it in his eyes. Most all of our conversations were very matter of fact and straight to the point. Taking a draw from his pipe he looked at me and said “Well boy I did something very stupid, and I paid the ultimate price. I am dead.” I could feel tears running down my cheeks and my father gave me that stern look of his when he did not approve of what I had done or what I was doing.

“Dry that shit up boy, you are too old to be blubbering on about your old dad. I had a good life, but the good Lord has a purpose for me and that is to talk to you and inform you.” He went on to explain to me how it was quite obvious evil was trying to take the world down, but there was light fighting the darkness and I had a part to play in it.

He said there were three chosen people who were coming together and they would be a powerful force against this tide of darkness. He said that they were to meet not too far from where I was. He said I would probably never even get to meet these three, even the one who was close by my location. It didn’t mean I was going to die, but I had a job to do and it was very important I follow what instructions he gave me from time to time to ensure these three came together.

I told dad I had no desire to do anything around here and that all I wanted was to get home to Alabama to Emily Grace and the family. My dad’s reaction was exactly what it was when I was a boy when I sassed him or told him I did not want to do what I was told. He knocked the hot ash from his pipe into the ashtray beside the chair and then quite quickly thumped me on the head with his pipe.

“Now listen up boy. Pay attention, and do as you are told. Emmy won’t live and neither will one or all three of the chosen if you don’t do as you are told.” He told me I had to gather a few people and some children and make them safe. At the appointed time I was to take them west and get them out of the area and to safety. The children especially had to be cared for because there were plans for them in the future after this was all over.

He rose from his chair and tucked his pipe into the pocket on the bib of his overalls and reached down with his calloused hand to me and told me to come with him. I took his hand and we were suddenly walking in a city I had never been to before. Dad said it was a hundred miles or so to the south of where I was staying and that when the time was right I was to come here and bring my pretty new girlfriend along, and my mangy mutt.

There was a group of people I had to kill who were holding two children and four other adults against their will. We were suddenly in the basement of some building and I watched as large man drug to kids around the age of nine or ten by their arms. He carelessly tossed both into a dark room and slammed the door and locked it. The man turned and walked right past us as if we were not even there. Dad said I was to definitely kill the man. He was pure evil and that the side of darkness favored him.

I told dad I understood but I was still worried to death about Emmy and wanted to be with her. He just shook his head no, and said maybe later, but he would show me everything was all right back home. We were suddenly on the porch of his house. I looked around as he pointed out all the defenses that he and my cousins had made to the homestead. I think I started to cry again, but this time out of happiness as I saw Emily Grace and Ann Maria playing together in the front yard.

I felt my father place his hand on my shoulder and I looked up at him. He smiled and told me she would continue to be safe as long as I did my part in the fight against evil. He said there was another close to the farm that he had been told about who would ensure Emily Grace’s safety through his actions against evil. He said everything everyone did was connected somehow in this battle and that I must do my part to ensure her safety and the safety of others. He pulled up tight against his leg and told me it was time to go.

I woke up at the crack of dawn feeling refreshed. I don’t know why, but I feel like the dream is true. I know my daughter is safe, and my father is dead. I don’t think I will tell Sam about this right now, she would probably think I am nuts and bust my skull in with that roofing hammer. I know that right now is not the time to head south but it feels as if the time will approach soon. I need to inventory the supplies we have again and do some maintenance on the truck to be sure everything will be ready for the trip south. I will fill you in on more later I have a lot to get done.

[streetpig1690]

September 10, 2010

Sam and I have gotten a lot done today. We didn’t get a lot done yesterday but today we spent most of the day going through all the stuff we got from her brother’s home and completing a little project. We got a lot of neat gear and weapons, but that aside I am pleased we got a lot of food. Her brother had over eight hundred pounds of rice sealed in Mylar bags and placed in five-gallon food buckets. This will be a big boost to the food supply.

We plan on cooking a couple of cups of rice with each meal and mixing in soups and stews. This will be a great stomach filler. Hell there are folks in third world countries where rice is their main diet. The eleven cases of MRE’s will be used only as a back up and when the rest of the food runs out or we are on the road. We also got quite a lot of canned goods. Personally I am looking forward to eating the peaches.

I suppose we have enough food now to stretch the two of us out another twelve to fourteen months. When I go get the people my father told me to get I suppose counting what we had before getting her brother’s food we will have enough to last us about a year at two meals a day. Yes, I have come to terms with the dream and I am going to get them. I have decided I will have to lie to Sam about how I know about these people. It pains me to even think about lying to her but to ensure she doesn’t start thinking I am crazy it is going to have to be done.

In the one of the gearboxes we located seven MOLLE vest just like mine but they are OD green in color. Another box revealed multiple magazine pouches, and different types of gear pouches and camel backs. I don’t know why he had so many, but maybe they were for a MAG or something. If you are unfamiliar with the term MAG it stands for mutual aid group. In the prepper and survivalist movement many people have formed them and store gear for other members at each bug out location in case a member is unable to get there with their personal gear. It only makes sense with all the duplicates in gear and equipment and that there was just Sam’s brother and sister in law living in the home.

Sam also dug out a MOLLE type holster that is used for some type of large revolver. It happens to fit one of the Thompson Contender pistols that Sam has fallen in love with. She now has it attached to her MOLLE vest. She now has a long-range accurate weapon in a small package. I teased her telling her she looked like she was carrying a pirate’s flintlock pistol.

I will have to say that Sam’s brother and possible group really liked the Armalite AR-180B. He had five of them with nine thirty round magazines per rifle. He also had four Glock 19, 9mm handguns, 2 Benellie M4 Super 90 tactical shotguns with twenty-inch barrels and extended mag tube. I was pleased to find that he had one RPK that fired 7.62x39 and had four seventy-five round drums to go with it. This was a civilian semi-auto version of the Russian military full auto one. Basically it was the Russian’s answer to the M-60 back in the cold war. It also takes the AK 47 magazine. I think it will come in handy against bad guys of the living sort. Not a bad haul, we now have a plethora of weapons for two people.

Sam and I have placed the Super 90’s at the front and rear door respectively with a extra box of ammo for each. These will be fallback weapons or long guns we can grab if near the door and not armed while inside. At each of the gates going up the stairs we have attached holsters with a Glock on the inside of the barricade with an extra magazine for each. These will serve the same purpose as the shotguns. Up on the balcony area upstairs we have placed two of the Armalites and three extra mags for each. These will also be great to have if zombies crash through into the lobby area and we are caught without our long guns in the middle of the night or just wandering around the lodge and need to put heavy fire down into the lobby area.

We more than made up for the ammo we blazed through at the house. I am not sure how much is in each ammo can because it is all loose but it sure is a lot. I am guessing that we have somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand rounds of 9mm, an additional five hundred in number four buckshot, three thousand rounds of .223 for the AR 180’s that will also feed the Thompson Contenders, and two thousand rounds of 7.62x39 for the RPK, which of course will also feed my VEPR. I also like the fact that the 75 round drums will fit in the VEPR. For some reason I never got around to buying any drums for my rifle. I grabbed an old SAW pouch that will hold one of the drums and will now carry it as part of my load out for the VEPR, this will be a hell of a force multiplier against any more hordes. Unfortunately there was no .45 ammo. Damn sissies, 9mm is for folks that squat to pee.

Also to reinforce my MAG theory we had two tubs with MultiCam ACU type tops and bottoms in a few different sizes. Four of the sets fit me and three fit Sam. I discussed it with Sam and suggested that we wear these on our outings. MultiCam is some really great stuff and blends in many different environments, including urban. I believe this will help us keep well concealed from the living and the dead since they seem to be attracted to things not only by sound but also by sight. Sam totally agrees.

There was a lot of other camping gear and equipment that I will not go into right now, but adding this new stuff to the hunting and camping gear I got from the guys at the motel we will be pretty well prepared for our little road trip. Sam and I spent an hour or so before lunch repacking the game carts I got so that we will both have redundant gear and equipment in a bug out if we lose one of the carts if forced to go on foot.

During lunch Sam said that we should build barricades to her room and the kitchen in case the house was overrun and we were trapped in one of the rooms. We grabbed some old oak pallets and two by fours from the maintenance shop to begin construction. We basically built a large closet around each of the doors with diagonal bracing attached to the inside of the walls and running left and right to the forward and back at the top for additional bracing.

We decided to spread some of the MRE packs throughout the house in each room along with bottled water. If we are trapped in a room this will at least give us something to eat and hopefully make it through till rescued or we can escape. I also placed extra ammo in each room. Sam took it upon herself to move some of the first aid kits into each room for the same reason.

Over supper I brought up my decision to go and search for the people I was told to get. The lie basically consisted of me telling her that my father had spoken to me via cell phone before they went out and that he said he had heard of their plight from a ham radio operator. Sam was a bit dubious about the idea stating that the chances of them being alive two and a half months later was pretty slim. I shot for just about every woman’s weak point, the children.
After some careful thought Sam agreed to the rescue attempt. God help me if she starts asking these folks questions. The game will probably be over if she asks them how they were calling for help and where their radio went. Of course the positive side is that if I have to reveal my dream to her I will have the rescued people to point to as it being legitimate. We spent the rest of the evening detailing what things we needed to do to prepare for the rescue and what items we would need to go and scavenge for if we did not have what we needed.

[streetpig1690]

September 11, 2010

We headed out early this morning to get what we needed. At the top of the list was a running vehicle large enough to haul the people we were going after. My truck just wasn’t going to cut it. Our first stop however was going to be an Auto Zone about two miles away. I wanted to get some extra batteries for the solar panels and for any vehicle we might find. Motor oil was on the checklist, as well as fuel cans. I had a pretty good tool set but I would take any I could find. Like bullets and everything else they aint making that shit no more.

Pulling into the parking lot of the Auto Zone we were greeted by one of the employees and several customers milling about the parking lot. It was too bad that they were undead. They were spread out enough that Sam and I decided to take them out with hammer and mace. I set Rommel loose and he happily went about knocking as many of the bastards down as possible. The employee who wore a Auto Zone uniform torn in the front was a big son of a bitch and Rommel had a hell of a time bringing him down. I didn’t fare much better in the killing category. This guy’s head was hard as a rock and big as a melon. Three swings later and I was finally able to crack his head open and send him to the other side.

The rest of the gang proved to be pretty easy pickings. I killed five more and Sam racked up seven. I had Sam go back to the truck and grab some flashlights so we wouldn’t be surprised inside the darkened store. There was no sense in pushing our luck and going in blind.

The front glass and doors of the store had been shattered by looters. Hopefully the place wouldn’t be devoid of everything. Once inside we found that the store hadn’t been hit to bad. After all if you are out looting who the hell wants to haul off heavy batteries, motor oil and car parts when plasma TVs, food, and clothes are there for the taking?

We found three more diligent employees wandering about the store, no doubt taking inventory of what was missing. We rewarded their fidelity to the company with a few blows to the head. I really hated busting Chris’s melon. According to the picture on the wall he had been the employee of the month. Nothing else seemed to be wandering the store; even the back office and supply room were empty of life.

After we cleared the store Sam and Rommel took up a lookout position at the front of the store while I gathered supplies. I believe I got the short end of the stick; car and truck batteries are heavy as hell. I toted four deep cycle batteries out for the solar panels back at the lodge and grabbed four for the road trip. I also managed to find three small twenty-watt solar panels. I intended to use the small panels to trickle charge the four extra batteries so that we could us an inverter to power and charge any gadgets we decided to take plus the four Motorola FRS radios we got from Sam’s brother. I forgot to mention we were using them now. Communication gear is a must in the world of the undead.

I also decided to grab some LED car floodlights to use for additional lighting. If we could find the right vehicle we could mount them on the exterior giving us a 360 degree lighted area. Also I picked up four of the small backing cameras with the small monitors. If we managed to get something like an RV we could mount one per side and anyone on watch could do so in the safety of the RV. I also grabbed quite a few five-quart plastic jugs of motor oil in various weights. Some for the Ford, and the others to cover whatever vehicle we managed to locate. Fuses, 12v wiring and wiring tools were among some of the items I grabbed for the electronics. I also grabbed some oil filters, transmission fluid, brake fluid, and belts, other filters, brake pads, starter, alternator, fuel pump, oil pump and glow plugs for the Ford. We wouldn’t be taking it but I wanted to have everything I could think of to repair it. I could only find a few fuel cans bringing my total up to seven five-gallon cans.

We finished up with the auto parts store and Sam suggested we try to find one of the nicer subdivisions in town to locate an RV. This was going to prove a little time consuming since neither of us were from the area and didn’t know where to locate one of the finer neighborhoods. Just before leaving the lot Sam told me to hold a second and ran back into the store and smashed the head of a zombie that had wandered up. Man how things had changed since the end of civilization. The way she just ran by it and busted the woman’s skull open was like she had just ran by someone and gave them a casual wave in the past. She never missed a beat on her jog back inside the store. She jumped back in the cab of the truck with a phone book in hand. Searching the yellow pages we found a country club not a mile away. Hell it even had a map and directions on how to get there. I am really starting to dig this chic.

About halfway to our destination Sam asked me to stop the truck. She exited the truck and pulled her Contender from its holster. She took aim at a group of four zombies approximately seventy-five yards away. She meticulously fired and reloaded killing each with a single round to the head. She hopped back in the truck and gave me a big kiss on the lips. Rommel wanted his and gave a bark and then a swipe of his big tongue across her face. The girl was in one hell of a happy mood and it was contagious. My girl had just killed four zombies because she wanted to shoot her toy and was acting like I had just won her a teddy bear at the county fair. Times had definitely changed.

Moving on we finally located the country club and a really nice neighborhood surrounded the east side of it. There were not many zombies walking the streets of this place but Sam took every chance she could get to hang out the window and bash one in the head as we drove by. I don’t know what the hell has gotten into her but now she was acting like we were teenage kids riding around smashing mailboxes, except these had brain matter and blood in them.
About eight blocks into the neighborhood we found what we were looking for. Sitting beside a house was a large detached RV barn with open doors revealing a huge RV. The house had to be in the $850,000.00 range. Pulling in the drive I shut the engine down. We circled the house looking for any stray zombies that might be about. The only thing we found was what appeared to be a young man in a bathing suit with half his head missing sprawled out on the steps leading into the pool.

The mood changed as we approached the large glass French doors. Rommel began to growl, staring intently into the house. Pressing my face to the window I could make out a moving form in the kitchen. I knocked on the door and got his attention. A fat middle-aged man dressed in a business suit with his left ear gone and the left side of his throat torn out shambled to the glass doors and began to beat on it.

I tried the door lever and it turned out not to be locked. I looked at Sam and she gave me a nod raising her hammer. I gave Rommel the hand signals to sit and stay and he quickly obeyed. Jerking the door open the man stumbled forward. Sam swung the roofing hammer as hard as she could right at his head. Unfortunately her aim was off and she struck him in the mouth and shattered about $3000.00 worth of dental work. The man definitely had a nice grill on him.

Sam stepped back and I moved in kicking him in the chest sending him reeling over a couch that was close to the door. I dashed in and bound over the back of the and crashed my mace down on his head finishing him off and utterly destroying the beautiful white with blood and brains. The lady of the house was not going to be pleased, not to mention the cleaning lady.

Speaking of the lady of the house and the cleaning lady both entered the room from two different directions to see who had just fucked up the carpet. I yelled for Rommel to attack and he charged into the room launching himself at the cleaning lady. Sam was hot on his heels and bashed her head in.
The lady of the house had most certainly been a trophy wife. She was a platinum blonde dressed in an expensive business dress. I couldn’t see a mark anywhere on her. The woman had one hell of an expensive rack on her to boot. Whoever her plastic surgeon was he would be happy to know how well her boob job had held up even when his client was dead.

I hated to do it but I planted the mace right into the top of her skull with a powerful overhand swing. I know she had to be pissed about the carpet but I got pissed about all the blood splatter on my new MultiCams. Her body fell backwards and into a glass coffee table shattering it.

The house was huge, at least seven thousand square feet. I was just glad it was a single story and not a two story. Sam and I took our time leaving Rommel posted by the shattered glass French door. We sure as hell didn’t need a repeat of her brother’s house, and Rommel would be our alarm. I was really happy with the way Sam and I cleared the house, all that practice had really paid off.

Before searching for useful items Sam and I went back outside and cleared the RV and a small pool house out back. We really should have searched those things first. I told Sam that for now on the exterior buildings get searched first to make sure nothing snuck in from our outer perimeter.

The house, despite being occupied by the dead had been extremely clean and organized. These folks must have died right at the beginning. Our first job was to locate the keys to the RV. That was our main goal over anything else. The search for the keys turned out to be a simple affair. While I searched the dead man’s pockets and tossed the master bedroom Sam had simply walked into the kitchen to and took the keys off of a small rack holding keys by the garage door. Note to self, pay attention to details when searching.

We made our way out to the RV, a 2009 Itasca Ellipse Class A diesel, and I put the keys in the ignition. I said a little prayer and turned the key. The engine groaned and turned over several times before it finally turned it over and began to purr. The RV was top of the line. Just behind the driver compartment there were two leather recliners with a leather couch on the opposite side. The next section had a small kitchen to the left with a dining table for two on the opposite side. The left side after that had a bathroom the right a large refrigerator and freezer. This was followed up by a partitioned section that held two full size beds. After the two beds was a door that led to a master bedroom with a queen size bed, and another bathroom. There were slide outs on both sides of the RV to enlarge the interior space. On the outside, on each side were large storage bins.

After a search of the RV we located quite a few canned goods, soft drinks, and several bottles of liquor in the cabinets. I went to the driver’s compartment shutting down the rig. I gave a quick glance to the fuel indicator that said we had a quarter tank of fuel. The interior of the barn held nothing of value. I was hoping for tools and spare parts but I guess if you can afford one of these things you can afford to take it in to the shop for repairs.

The house didn’t have a lot of things in value that we could use. Well it had some expensive shit but not that would be valuable to us in this particular circumstance. We did empty the house of paper products, feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, new toothbrushes, some over the counter medicines, and what little bit of food that was in the pantry.

The house cleared, the RV loaded up, we headed back for the lodge. Sam insisted that she drive the RV. Checking my rearview mirror looking at Sam as we drove out of the neighborhood I could see her face had a huge smile plastered on it. The girl was definitely having a good day.

Just outside of the neighborhood I spotted a large dump truck. I radioed Sam to stop but to keep the engine running. I grabbed three of the fuel jugs and took them to the dump truck. I went back to the toolbox on the back of the truck and grabbed a large Phillips head screwdriver and a hammer. I punched three holes in the driver side fuel tank and placed the jugs underneath to catch the diesel as it poured out of the tank. Sam had to kill three shamblers who had walked up on me while getting the fuel. Overall we managed to get thirty gallons of fuel transferred to the RV, giving us half of a tank of fuel.

We decided to head back to the lodge and call it a day. I really wanted to hit a metal shop of some sort and get some thick iron sheets angle iron and a welder of some sort to armor the RV up a bit. The damn thing had too much fiberglass for my liking. Sam gave the idea a thumbs down and said we shouldn’t push our luck. If we ran into another horde we could lose one or both vehicles if we had to flee in a hurry. We just didn’t have the manpower to conduct efficient scavenging operations. This end of the world survival shit was getting complicated.

As we rolled up to the gates of the campground we spotted seven zombies milling about the front gate. Now you tell me just where in the hell seven zeds came from out here in the middle of nowhere. I really didn’t feel like fucking around with these guys so I exited the truck with the VEPR and conducted a little bit of marksmanship training. The seven were put down quickly and without any fuss or complications. We were really going to have to stop using the guns when the use of melee weapons would suffice. Though we had plenty of ammo it would be best to conserve it as much as possible.

After getting to the lodge Sam and I decided to check the traps and fishing reels. After retrieving two more rabbits, and three fish and getting them cleaned and preserved we moved on to organizing what needed to go into the RV for the trip. That pretty much sums up the day for us. I feel great about our progress and want to get everything finished up and start our journey.

[SteveD]

Way cool story so far......

[Dr Jekell]

Why are we waiting, WHY ARE WE WAITING FOR

MOAR!!!

[Laager]

Looking good.........looking forward to MOAR! Thank you for posting your story.

[streetpig1690]

September 12, 2010

Although, we had a lot to do today, Sam and I did not skip our workout. We have to stay in top physical condition if we are to carry out the rescue attempt. The workout completed, and breakfast finished we started on sorting gear. The RV was going to be our home away from home and base of operations and we needed to have everything we could possibly need in the event disaster struck or we were unable to make it back to the lodge.

Food was important but there was still a lot of it out there to be scavenged. We packed away enough food for eight people for two weeks, two light meals a day. It is amazing how much food that is. You just never think about how much food we have to have to survive.

We packed one entire cabinet with medical gear. I thought it was way too much. In today’s world, most injuries such as gunshot wounds and bites are deadly. Hell a decayed tooth can kill you or even a minor infection. Sam canned my argument even after I explained to her neither of us had the medical skills necessary to treat major wounds. She said we would have to remedy that and just hit a library for medical books and get OJT when the time came.
I am glad I have Sam along because she thought of a million little things that never really crossed my mind. Little things like dish soap, extra towels, wash clothes, everyday little things we just never think about. I guess a woman’s mind is wired a little differently than a man’s.

I decided we would take all the weapons and ammo along with us. The only thing I decided to leave behind was the revolvers and the ammo for them. I wrapped the pistols in oil soaked clothes and then placed them in plastic bags and hid them and the ammo (placed in a plastic tub) in the maintenance building. I saw no reason to leave the weapons or any ammo for scavengers such as ourselves. It would be bad enough that they would get the majority of our food if they discovered the lodge. I forgot to note that along with the two-week supply of regular food, we packed all the cases of MREs.

I loaded the gas and diesel jugs on the top of the RV, lashing them down. The more fuel we have the better. The RV is equipped with a small 1500-watt generator and we have plenty of gas to run it. I mounted the small solar panels to the top of the RV. I had to have Sam’s help setting up the cameras, LED lights, and monitors. We placed the batteries that are hooked into the solar panels in one of the outside bins. Sam grabbed a couple of wooden boxes from the maintenance building and attached them to the inside of one of the bins for the batteries to sit in so they would not slide around. The girl can cook, clean, kill, and knows a bit about electronics, she is a definite keeper.

We also loaded up the two game carts in case we had to leave on foot, but I guess I have mentioned that. We skipped lunch to finish up the job and once satisfied with our efforts we sat down to make a list of items we would need or come up with things that we had forgotten. I am both glad and unhappy that we did. There is a bunch of shit we need to get and that means another trip to the outside. While we have fared well on our outings, limited though they may be, the incident at her brother’s haunts me.

Fuel is a definite priority. We have twenty-five gallons of gasoline, and zero diesel in the fuel containers since we have dumped everything into the RV. The fuel gauge reads just under full so it probably needs another ten to twelve gallons to top her off. The owner’s manual says the RV holds one hundred gallons for this model. Sam has suggested we get a smaller water pump that uses garden hoses for the attachments and use it to siphon our fuel. Great idea but where the hell are gonna find that. Being a woman, she had the answer readily at hand.

Sam says there is a small garden shop just outside of Westfield her sister-in-law took her to and they had one they were using to pump water from a small pond. Sam pulled out one of the local maps she got out of the RV and showed me where it was at. We are a lot closer to Westfield than I thought. I should have paid more attention to the maps I was looking at early on.

We would locate fuel on the way to Westfield. After taking a good look at the RV, I decided we needed three additional things. We need armor for the damn thing and some type of plow or wedge to push the undead aside. The RV will be no good to us off road, so we are going to have to stick to the roads. I do not think the RV, despite its mass, will make it through a horde of undead. We will probably lose traction if enough get stuck under the chassis. Sam said she knows of a place that may have the angle iron, and metal sheets we need to armor the RV up. As best as she can recollect the metal working shop that builds trailers is about half a mile past the garden center she has told me about.

There wasn’t much daylight left when we were done with our brainstorming so we decided to end the day with a decent meal. First things first though, we went down to the lake and had two bass and a brim on the reels. Fish collected we decided we had best take the reels with us in case we never got a chance to come back. The traps were empty and Sam took them down, no sense killing any game when we were not going to be around.

September 13, 2010

After our workout and breakfast, we loaded the truck up to make a scavenging run. I had to get back on top of the RV and get the diesel fuel jugs. I shouldn’t have lashed them to the top empty anyway; I can be a dumbass at times.

The plan for the day was to head to the metal working shop first and then head back to the garden center for the pump. The drive to the metal shop was fairly uneventful. Sam was still in a chipper mood and hung out the window smacking down any undead who came within range of her hammer.
Once we arrived at the metal shop, we had to put on our game faces. There were five zeds in the parking lot. Sam stood on the hood of the truck with her rifle in an over watch position while Rommel and I went hands, and paws, on. Four of the five zeds went down without a problem; the fifth was a different story all together. He was a tall skinny bastard and seemed to move at almost normal speed.

As we approached him, the son of a bitch actually pointed at me and opened his mouth as if he was letting out a silent scream. I will have to admit I about shit my pants right then and there. It freaked me out enough that I froze up for a few seconds. If it had not been for Rommel the bastard would have got me. When he lunged for me, Rommel was on his ass like white on rice.

Unlike most zombies Rommel struck, this one did not lose his balance and fall to the ground for the easy kill. This one was just knocked off course and he was still able to latch both hands on my shoulders. Our eyes locked as he reared his head back, opening his mouth to sink his teeth into my throat. It was time for fight or flight and I never learned to fly. I brought the mace up between us, the metal ball striking him just under the chin causing him to stumble backwards and in the process knock Rommel to the side.

That little stumble was the opening I needed to counter attack. The mace still close to his midsection I rammed it into his ribs further pushing him backwards and giving me more room to operate. My first swing brought the mace down on his collarbone shattering it. Letting the momentum carry the mace back towards my left side I came back at him with a backhanded swing right into the jaw. I swear you could hear the jawbone and teeth shatter a mile away.
The blow spun him away from me. Instead of turning to attack, he quickly headed towards the corner of the building and the tree line. Just as he made the tree line, he slowed and looked back over his shoulder at me and then disappeared. I didn’t give chase or try to finish the kill; I was too stunned by his actions to do anything else.

As I turned to Sam, I said “Did you see that shit?” Apparently, she did because she stood there on the hood of the truck slack jaw with the rifle hanging loosely in her hands. I was glad to see I hadn’t imagined that shit. Both of us were shaken up but ready to continue and we circled the building searching for any more zombies.

We didn’t locate any so we checked the windows of the business. Inside we could make out two shapes shuffling in the darkness. I went to check the door but Sam called me over to a pull up door that was raised about three inches off the ground. I like the way she thinks. Opening the pull up garage door would let more light into the interior of the building and it was most likely where the items we needed would be located.

Before reaching down, I put on my heavy leather gloves, no sense in getting bitten by a crawler without some sort of protection. Squatting down I gripped the door and heaved it open and jumped back. It was a good thing I did because this skinny little bastard in dirty work coveralls was standing there waiting on us.
Sam moved in quickly and drove the head of her hammer into the side of his head as he moved towards me with outstretched arms. The blow staggered him backwards, and Sam pressed on and hit him two more times in the head before he dropped dead. The scrawny little turd sure was hard headed. Hopefully, his two big friends that were coming into the work bay would not be as tough.

Rommel took the first one down and Sam charged forward and hit the second fellow in the back of the head as he turned his attention towards Rommel. He collapsed in a heap across the legs of the first man allowing Sam to easily smash his brains in. Stepping back from her grisly deed she turned to me and gave me a wink. It might have been a cute little act if it hadn’t been for the speckles of blood and small skull fragments on her face. I told her to go get some of the antibacterial cleaner out of the truck and clean up while Rommel and I checked the office area.

The office area proved to be empty of anymore undead. A quick search reveled an old Charter Arms .44 snub nose loaded and a box of shells with twelve rounds in the desk drawer. The only thing else of interest was the three six packs of Coke in the office fridge. I took the items and placed them in the cab of the truck. I hopped in the truck and backed it up to the garage door.

I posted Rommel outside to keep an eye on things for us as we got busy. We loaded up twenty sheets of four foot by eight-foot quarter inch thick iron sheets. Unfortunately, for us it wasn’t ballistic grade and would only stop handgun rounds at the most. Maybe doubled up it might stop smaller caliber rifle rounds or lead nose-hunting rounds from .30 caliber rifles. It would do the job though as far as being used as to push the undead from the front of the RV.

Next, we loaded the angle iron, heavy-duty hinges, roll pins, and then the cutting torch, welder and the items that were used to operate them. Finally, we emptied the place of every electric and hand tool we could find. The entire procedure didn’t take more than twenty minutes before we were ready to roll. As we exited the building and sealed it back up for possible future use, we spotted a zombie walking into the lot. Sam didn’t hesitate before she drew her pistol and put a round in her head, the zombie’s brains splattering across the white sign of the metal shop. I gave her a quizzical look as she hopped into the cab and she just said she didn’t have time to fuck around and for me to move out. Sometimes women can have just way to much attitude.

When we got to the garden center, we could see that there were four zombies milling about the outer section of the parking lot and two more walking among the three greenhouses. One of the zombies was an older woman in a sunbonnet, wearing shorts and what appeared to be gardening gloves. When I see things like this, I wonder if there is a shred of their humanity left in them and that they go to places that are familiar to them.

Sam told me to forget pulling into the lot and to put the Ford into four wheel drive and circle back towards the pond where she last saw the pump. I did as instructed and circled back towards the small pond. We were rewarded with Sam’s quick thinking. Sitting on a small stand ten yards from the pond was the pump. I pulled up right next to the pump and we exited the truck moving fast, the zombies were making their way to us, drawn to the sound of the diesel engine.

Sam and Rommel covered me as I ran around to the pump. Checking the fuel tank, I could see it was empty. I grabbed a fuel can we brought along with us and filled the tank. I then pulled the small hose that was attached to the pump and running into the pond out of the water. That done I primed the engine and began pulling the starter rope, praying it would start. I know you are thinking, what the fuck, but I wanted to see if the thing worked. If it didn’t we would have to continue the search for a pump. If it did it would speed up our fuel gathering process and we could get back to the lodge all the faster.

After six or seven pulls, the motor hummed to life. I went ahead and let the engine run because Sam had opened fire on the zombies heading our way, so much for noise discipline. Apparently, there were more zombies we had failed to see when pulling up. There were sixteen of the damn things headed our way now, the closest ten yards away when Sam began to fire, urging me to grab my rifle and help out.

As I rounded the truck, I was shocked to see a zombie not six yards away. He must have come from the dry cleaning business forty yards away. Rommel had not even noticed this guy; I guess his attention was totally focused on those coming from the garden center. I jerked the shotgun from the scabbard and fired two quick rounds.

My first shot totally missed. For those of you who assume that you cannot miss with a shotgun I have news for you, you can. I know it was close range but I pulled the trigger well before the barrel was lined up with his head. My second shot took care of the problem blowing the man’s head completely apart leaving nothing but a bloody stump. The threat gone I re-holstered the shotgun and reached inside the truck grabbing my VEPR. I scanned my side of the truck first though just to be sure there was no more threats from that area. The area clear I turned and joined Sam in putting down the zeds from the garden center.

Thirty seconds later, it was over. I slapped in a fresh magazine and placed the half-empty one in my dump pouch. I headed back around the truck and got to the pump and switched it off. Sam stayed where she was at as I coiled the intake and output hoses up and disconnected them from the pump and placed them in the bed of the truck. I struggled a bit to get the pump in the truck by myself but I managed.

We decided to check out the interior of the garden center for useful items and pulled up into the lot. Rommel seemed relaxed as we approached the shattered glass door of the business. We conducted our sweep of the interior finding only three corpses of former employees decaying in the floor. The store looked to have been ransacked but in an unorganized fashion. So we took our time searching the business and were rewarded with our patients.

While Sam filled a shopping cart with vegetable seeds, bags of potting soil, fertilizer, and garden tools I returned to the parking lot. It was a good thing I did, there were at least half a dozen zeds heading our way drawn to the area by the gunfire from earlier. I met the closest of them as he entered the lot shattering his skull with my mace. The approaching zombies were staggered out in their approach and I killed each as they reached the lot as Sam finished loading up the truck.

The looting completed we got back on the road began our search for fuel. Westfield looked like a war zone. I was certainly glad I had not been here when the civilization shit the bed. In some of the neighborhoods we passed, we could see bodies literally littering the streets. After thirty minutes of slow driving we came across a large white delivery truck, it was time to test out Sam’s idea.

We worked quickly setting up the pump and re-attaching the hoses to the pump. We left the jugs and pump inside the truck of course and ran the intake hose to the delivery truck. With the hose inserted, I fired the pump up with a couple tugs on the pull start. Ten seconds later, we had fuel coming out of the hose. We let a few gallons pump through the system before putting the hose in the first jug. We wanted to ensure we had as little water as possible that may have remained in the lines get into our fuel supply.

Five minutes later, we were twenty gallons richer in diesel fuel. We lucked out on our first refueling, zombies were headed our way but we had emptied the delivery truck of fuel, and even topped off the pickup. We still had five more fuel cans to refill and continued our search. We found an wrecked truck similar to the one we were driving about a mile down the road that had crashed into a telephone pole.

The driver of the truck was still strapped in to the seat with his seat belt, but he still reached out the broken window in an attempt to reach us. While I set up the pump and cloth filters over the openings Sam dispatched the driver with several blows to his head. A few minutes later the fuel jugs were filled and we were on our way. We made the decision to forgo anymore scavenging. The sound of the pump running had drawn the attention of the local undead and the streets were starting to fill with them.

An hour later, we pulled into the lodge. The area seemed to be secure and Rommel was relaxed bounding around the area marking his territory. Scanning the area my eyes fell on the unfinished wall. As soon as we returned, I would finish its construction. Hopefully I would have a few more helping hands and could finish it quickly. The support post were already in place and with the use of the backhoe and some chains, it could be finished quickly. Then we would have a safe area around the lodge giving us some breathing room.

We unloaded all of the gardening materials placing them inside the lobby of the lodge. The two of us were starving and it was nearing noon anyway so we ate a large lunch. Bellies full we made our way back outside to begin stripping sheet metal from the exterior of the front end on the RV to reveal the frame underneath. It was hotter than blazes and I stripped off my shirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I say Sam whip off her t-shirt and toss it aside. When I looked at her, she just wiggled her eyebrows at me and went back to work. Dear Lord thank you for this unseasonably warm weather and the majestic sights it has helped bring about.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon framing up the wedge shaped frame that we would attach to the front end of the RV. Once mounted it would protrude five feet at the center. Since we were using eight-foot sheets the remaining three feet would extend at a forty-five degree angle towards the sides. This would allow the zombies that were shoved out of the way to be rolled out past the RV to the side. It would also allow concealment and cover against some small arms fire at the front if one were to kneel behind the plating.

It was nearing dark when we called it quits. We would have liked to continue but we would had to run the generator in the dark and we wouldn’t be able to see any zombies that may walk up on us. Another big reason to finish the wall. If the wall had been completed, we could have worked in relative safety.
Thinking on that it gave me an idea. I believe if I cut down several telephone poles and get some galvanized roofing and siding, I can build a barn that is attached to the wall. Placing some large doors on the barn, we could back the RV into the barn and enter the fenced in area in safety. Also if I could locate some solar powered gate openers we wouldn’t even have to exit the RV to enter the barn, just roll right in. Just another thing to add to my list.

September 14, 2010

We ate breakfast very early again, but skipped our workout. Hell we got enough of a workout moving the iron around. The metal frame for the pusher sat on some logs that were just about the height we planned on mounting it. We had to use some poles for leverage to raise each side to get it in place. Talk about a pain in the ass! We wound stacking loose stones and boards to finally get the thing at the right height and in place. It took all damn morning to do it. I believe the welds will hold up to the weight and the pressure of pushing the undead away. It ought to since I put enough welds in place to hold a battleship together. We also had to do some re-enforcement to the existing frame.

Once that was completed, we decided to start work on the inside of the RV. We would hold off on welding the pusher’s metal plates till later. Sam pulled out the interior covering in several sections. While she did this, I constructed several frames out of angle iron.

We attached these frames along the sides on the center portion of the RV. First, I had to weld the metal plates to the angle iron frame, one on each side, before sliding them into place against the interior walls and welding them in place. We really fucked the floors up on the inside doing this. We followed this up by placing the same type of frame and metal plates against the walls where the beds were. Later we would take the truck down to the maintenance shop and shovel gravel into the bed of the truck and bring it back up to the RV.

The plan was to fill the void in the frames with gravel giving us half an inch of iron plating and four inches of gravel in between. Hopefully this would be enough to stop high caliber rifle rounds fired from weapons like the AK and AR. The protection would be limited though. The frames were only four feet high so your body would only be protected if laying in bed or sitting in one of the recliners or couch. Of course, if we took a lot of fire we could lay in the floor.
This took up the rest of the day and we headed inside to the comfort of the lodge. Things did take a bit of a upturn when Sam decided to join me in the shower. After cleaning up, we went upstairs to my room. I was expecting a night filled with passion but I was let down when Sam fell asleep almost immediately. You know I still haven’t found that eighteen-wheeler loaded down with lotion. Well I am about to doze off and sitting here writing this just doesn’t seem as exciting as at least being able to crawl into bed with a sleeping nude Samantha.

September 16, 2010

I missed out writing yesterday because I was so damn tired when we got done working on the RV. Hell, I am tired as shit right now but I thought I would an update on our progress. On a personal note on progress, I think Samantha has decided to move in to the upstairs room with me permanently. She has moved all of her personal items upstairs. There really has been no discussion about it, it just happened. Of course, “It” hasn’t happened. I sure would like to discuss that with her but I better play my cards right or I just might find myself sleeping alone again.

The RV is complete! It took two more days but everything is welded in place and good to go. We took it out for a test run this afternoon. Sam drove and I followed in the truck in case one of the welds failed on the plow and caused the RV to be rendered immobile. Sam seemed to take a lot of joy in running down the dead. The pusher/plow rolled the bastards right out of the way. Only one got stuck under the thing but his head got wedged under the pusher till the concrete ground his skull down into pulp then the pusher just shoved his body to the side.

We also completed a ballistics test on the armor. No, we didn’t shoot the damn RV. I had an extra frame and welded the plates on and filled it full of gravel. The AK punched through the first layer of iron and penetrated to the second layer. It did not puncture the second side. It takes four to five rounds shot in the same area before it penetrates. Of course, I am using more modern AK ammo, which has the lead core. If someone has their weapon loaded with the old steel core stuff, I think the armor is toast. The panels with a single sheet will stop everything from the .44, .357, 9mm, and 12 gauge slugs and buck.

We also plated over the side windows. It is only a single sheet due to the fact that both sides of the RV have slide outs. I didn’t want to over burden the motors that operated the things if we decided to make more room in the RV. I also cut firing/viewing ports in the plates. We don’t intend to shoot out the glass unless absolutely necessary, but if we have to, we have to. So basically the windows will only be protected against handgun and shotgun rounds.

Building and placing the frame to cover the window went fairly easy. You would think it would have been the hardest part. For some reason while trying to fit the pusher/plow we totally forgot about the backhoe. This time we used the backhoe to lift the totally completed frame and put it in place. Man if we would have just stopped and put a little thought into the project we could have saved hours of tough labor. There is a twelve-inch slot all the way across the plating that runs the length of the windshield, but other than that we built it just like the doubled interior frames.

I know some of you are thinking that the twelve-inch gap is way too big and a good marksman will put rounds right through it. Shooting at a moving vehicle is harder than you think. If you ever get a chance you will see I am correct. I wanted the twelve-inch gap so that I could have total visibility while driving.

We single plated the entry door and cut a firing/viewing port in it. You can still open the window from inside and allow air to circulate if the AC goes out. Plus you can shoot out of it without blasting the window to pieces. We also took some of the scrap pieces and covered the wheel wells. We placed hinges on them so that the tires can be changed. The plates cover about half of each wheel. That isn’t 100% coverage but it is better than nothing.

We sandwiched two plates together and placed them over the side driver’s area to give the driver a bit of protection. It has a collapsible window cover with a locking bar so if the driver desires he can open the glass window and then push the iron flap up and lock it in place allowing air to flow in and also a possible escape route if zombies start making their way in. The double plates will of course stop pistol, shotgun and even the AR rounds from Sam’s rifle. Unfortunately it failed the Remington 700 and AK test. So more than likely anyone with a high caliber-hunting rifle will be able to fire rounds into the compartment unless they are using hollow point or led nosed hunting bullets.

The once beautiful $300,000.00 RV is one ugly son of a bitch now. Sam has christened the RV, BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fucker). She says the name of the old B-52 bomber is somehow appropriate. Staring at our creation I have got to agree.

To totally screw the RV up Sam has drug the air compressor, paint gun and several gallons of flat black metal primer paint. I told Sam I wasn’t going to waste my time painting the damn thing. She told me to suite myself and said she thought it would be cool as hell.

I sat on the porch watching Sam through the surrounding barricade and sipping a cold Coke. Right now I am not sure which was better, watching a topless Sam paint the RV, or sipping the first cold Coke I have had in months. I will have to call it a night and hit the rack tomorrow we head out on our rescue mission.

[FrostedCandyMan]

I'm glad ole Leroy finally has another living human to talk to. This is an awesome story, keeps me reading on and on! Keep it coming!!!!

[streetpig1690]

September 17, 2010

It is about midnight and I still cannot sleep. My cheek and head hurts and I ache all over. Well I could sleep, but I am extremely nervous about closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep. Sam is back in the back fast asleep, probably pissed and in I know in pain, it has been a shitty day. Pretty much just as my dad said it would be. Yeah I had another dream last night.

It started off in the white room again except the room was completely empty and dad sat in his rocker smoking his pipe. He said though the trip was only a hundred miles it may turn out to be a long one if we made the wrong choices. He told us to be very wary of strangers on the first leg of the trip. He said that there were good people and evil on that leg of the journey and we would definitely meet one or the other. He rose from his rocker, opened a door that I had not noticed, and gazed out as I walked up to his side and looked out.

Outside the door, the area was covered in a thick fog. The only thing I could make out was a red brick wall and a rusted metal door that stood ajar. Dad slowly closed the door and shook his head.

“That’s the only thing I can show you about your first leg son. Evil is clouding the vision. This is where it will happen, for better or worse, evil wants those children and will try to stop you from rescuing them. At the place, I just showed you there is an old man named Harry who can help guide you to exactly where the hidden entrance is that will lead you to the children. If you don’t meet Harry I guess you will have to come up with your own plan.”
Then the dream shifted to some place else, a large open bay garage that appeared to be used to repair eighteen-wheelers. “I am not quite sure where in the town this is but it will be the safest place for you to park the RV and remain hidden. Find it and use it, and they will not find the RV on their patrols.” The dream ended and I woke up.

We started our day very early. Both of us eager to get on the road and get those children, Sam was still a bit skeptical that it would be a fruitful journey but was still willing to give it a shot. Walking outside I gazed at Buff. I had to give a little laugh, Sam was right painted flat black it did look pretty damn cool. Sam walked briskly by me giving me a slap on the ass and told me to load up. She boarded Buff and hopped into the driver seat. Somehow, when I woke up this morning, I just knew I would be riding in the bitch seat.

Sam started out slow as we left the lodge but once on the main road we had a mile or so of empty road. Sam put the hammer down and Buff’s engine responded superbly. Just before Sam began to slow, a zombie stepped out into the road making his way toward us drawn by the roar of the motor. Sam’s lips parted with a mischievous grin as she pushed the pedal down even more.

I eased my hand over and slipped the seat belt on. “Sam I am not sure the pusher will handle a blow at these speeds.” I said.

She just giggled and told me to quit being such a girl. When Buff hit the zombie, the rig was running about seventy miles per hour. When we collided with the son of a bitch he just exploded on impact. Blood and brains splattered the front windshield mostly saturating the passenger side. Sam let out a big whoop raising her fist in the air in triumph. She immediately began to slow telling me she wanted to check her baby out and make sure everything was good to go.
She exited the rig and ran around the front with me on her heels to examine the pusher for damage. The front end of the plow was covered in gore. It looks like the impact was just off the centerline on the passenger side. I climbed up on the driver side of the pusher and made my way to the center bouncing up and down to see if the pusher had loosened anywhere. Then I got underneath checking the bolts and welds. Climbing back to my feet, I pronounced the pusher in good condition.

Sam wrapped her arms around my neck; bounced up and wrapped her legs around my waist kissed me and said, “Do we build great shit or what!”. Just a few months ago, a man would have had to buy his girl a nice piece of jewelry to get a reaction like that from his girlfriend. Now all ya gotta do is make an armored zombie-crushing rig or get her a bag full of bullets and you’re the man. It’s a lot less expensive, but the risks are greater.

She hopped down and it was my turn to be a smartass, and I slapped her on her butt and told her to clean up her mess so we could at least see out of the windshield again. I sat down in the passenger seat and propped my feet up. Sam entered and went to the back grabbing a squeegee and a bucket with water she got out of the shower. I watched her clean the mess from the windshield chuckling as I watched her grimace as she wiped away the gore I hoped it would keep her from doing anymore-silly stunts like the one she just pulled. I have my doubts that, that will happen. I believe Sam is one of those folks who thrive on adrenaline.

Sam and Rommel came back in after dumping the bloody water on the side of the road. Getting back in the driver seat, she told me I was cleaning next time. I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek telling her only if I make the mess.

As we drove onward, we had to drive slowly, the average speed about ten to fifteen miles an hour. The roads were blocked by wrecked vehicles and abandoned ones lined some sections. I was quite impressed with how Sam handled Buff in these tight quarters. She took great care not to overtax the pusher. We would occasionally stop and check the welds on the pusher to ensure we were not damaging the thing. So far, it has held up well despite the abuse we are putting it through.

On one of these stops, I noticed a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a large heavy-duty winch on the front brush guard. I told Sam to watch my six as I ran back to Buff to get a toolbox. Returning to the pickup, I broke out my tools and started to loosen the bolts. Once that was completed, I began to detach the wiring when Sam told me I might want to hurry.

Glancing up I knew I had to hurry. A group of ten zombies were coming up onto the road from a low-lying area not thirty yards away. Sam yelled to me asking me how much time did I need to finish. I told her just a couple of minutes. Her response was a steady stream of lead as she started taking down the zeds with her rifle.

I worked as fast as I could and was finally down to two bolts holding the wire harness in place. Looking down I grabbed the crescent wrench. As I looked up, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Snapping my head around I was stunned to see a zombie in a dirty, frayed pinstripe suit with a brief case still in his left hand stepping around the front end of the truck.

I reacted quickly never even thinking about drawing my pistol. I leaped forward driving the wrench into the eye and destroying the brain of the former executive. Looking around for more threats, I saw none. Sam had done a fine job of taking out all of the zombies that had approached from the opposite side of the road. Reaching down I tried to retrieve wrench, but the damn thing was stuck. Kind of pissed me off, it was a nice Craftsman. Grabbing a second wrench from the toolbox, I finished up the job and loaded the winch into one of the outer storage bins to be installed later.

We continued on and had no more problems for most of the day. Around mid-afternoon, the weather started to change the bright sun replaced by dark clouds and a light drizzle. The day had started off fairly warm but was now starting to rapidly cool off, steam began rising from the roadway obscuring our visibility causing us to drive even slower.

As the sun began to set and we were searching for a place to set up for the night the fog rolled in and we slowed to a crawl. We finally spotted a gravel drive leading off into the woods and chose to pull in and see if it would be a good enough place to hole up for the night.

About thirty yards in we came to an old brick structure that might have been some type of small factory or garage thirty or forty years ago. Sam seemed to think this would be a good place to hole up after we checked out the building to make sure there were no undead around. Rommel seemed at ease as we exited Buff so I wasn’t too worried about finding any undead.

I pulled out my pistol and flashlight as we slowly walked to the building. I came to an abrupt halt as the beam of light from my flashlight illuminated the door. It was the same door from my dream. Sam walked up to me putting her hand on my shoulder causing me to jump asking me what I saw. I told it was nothing, but the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end.

Just as we started to move forward a frail voice called out from the interior of the building not to shoot. I told the person to come out of the building slowly with his hands raised. A hand grasped the door and eased the door open. An old man stepped out of the darkness a thick oak cane in his right hand. The person must have been about seventy. My mind was a whirlwind of emotion. Could this have be the man named Harry my father had spoken of in my dreams. I remember thinking “Certainly this guy couldn’t be evil. Hell how could he be evil he is a harmless old man.”.

He said his name was Herman. Well it wasn’t Harry, but maybe my dad got it wrong or maybe this guy had nothing to do with the dream. The old man invited us into the building. Lighting a small gas lantern the interior was illuminated with the light. I noticed a couple of old presses that were used in forming sheet metal. The room was about thirty feet by forty feet, cobwebs and dust covering many of the machines, and shelves around the shop.

Herman led us into a small office that he had obviously been using to sleep, and cook in. There was a stack of canned goods in one corner and a cot with several wool blankets in a pile in the other. The desk had a gas cook stove sitting on top of it. The windows were covered with old tarps, probably to keep light from escaping so he would not draw attention to himself.

I asked him what his story was and he told me all would be told and due time as he shuffled over to the stack of cans. Sam and I glanced at each other and she just gave me a shrug of the shoulders. If the old coot wanted to be theatrical then I guess we had all night for him to entertain us.
Several minutes later he brought each of us a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup. He even had one for Rommel. We ate the soup as Herman started to tell us his story. Herman said he and his brother had operated this sheet metal shop back in the seventies and eighties before going out of business. I asked him how he wound up here of all places to hide out.

Herman was about to tell us when Rommel scratched on the door to be let out. Funny thing was I never noticed the door being shut after we entered. Herman shuffled over and let Rommel out to do his business. He closed the door and that is when the conversation started to get really weird.
“So Herman why did you pick this place of all places to hide out?” I asked while stirring my soup.

“Well son, there isn’t a lot of foot or vehicle traffic this far out from town so not to many of those zombie things seem to come out this way. Heck they don’t seem to bother me at all.” Herman said as he stood before us leaning on his cane with both hands. “The old place has a hand pumped water well, iron doors and plus I was told to come here.”

“What do you mean, told to come here.” I said as I slowly placed the bowl of soup on the floor at my feet.
“The dreams boy, just like the ones you have had, you do remember your dreams don’t you?” He said as he began to grin.

Sam put her bowl down as well and looked at me. “What the hell is he talking about Leroy? What dreams?” A look of confusion settling on her face.

“Well Sam there is something I have lied about, and I guess now is a good a time as any to tell you.” I said looking at her. Her look of confusion turned to one of anger.

Herman interrupted at this point and said to Sam. “Don’t be mad at the boy Sam. If he had told you his dead daddy came to him in a dream and told him to go save some kids a hundred miles away you would have thought he was nuts. If you thought he was nuts he wouldn’t be able to save the kids from evil.”
We both turned to look at Herman, our mouths hanging open. “How do you know about the dreams Herman? Do you have them too.” I said.

“Oh I have dreams boy, but mine aint the same as yours.” Herman’s voice dropped several octaves and he almost hissed the words that came out of his mouth. “The man in my dreams told me what I need to do. He showed me your dreams, he showed me my brother Harry’s dreams. I made sure Harry’s ass wasn’t getting those kids and you aren’t either.”

Holy shit was that old man fast! I don’t know where he found the strength or the speed but he suddenly wasn’t the shuffling old man of thirty minutes ago. He struck me with the oak cane across the face sending me somersaulting backwards off the milk crate I was sitting on and into the door. Sam reacted fast, but not fast enough as Herman hit her with a back swing across the face sending tumbling sideways, headfirst into the old steel desk knocking her completely out.

I was vaguely aware of something frantically scratching at the door as I tried to pull myself up by pulling on the doorknob but was knocked back to the ground as Herman turned his attack back to me, the sole of his heavy boot crashing into my head. Herman followed up with a blow from the cane into my solar plexus driving the air from my lungs.

He drew the cane back once again giving me a fraction of a second to go on the attack. I lashed out with a leg sweep sending Herman flipping backwards to floor. I gasped for air as I pulled on the door handle trying to stand. The knob turned as I tried to pull myself up, only to be knocked down again as the door came crashing into me.

Rommel burst into the room taking only a second to set eyes on Herman as he began to sit up. Rommel pounced on Herman’s chest pinning him to the floor as his powerful jaws latched on to his throat. Rommel ripped his throat out with two violent shakes of his head. A fountain of blood spewed forth, blood spread rapidly across the floor into a large pool.

Rommel moved from Herman to Sam pawing at her and whimpering. Herman’s body began to twitch almost immediately. I struggled to draw my pistol, my hands feeling like rubber. As Herman sat up I locked eyes with him. He glared at me with those dead white eyes and began to try to get up, his head flopping from side to side. I was totally shocked, I had never seen someone reanimate so quickly.

Rommel stood protectively over Sam and was about to attack Herman when I finally was able to grip my pistol and draw it from the holster. I started pulling the trigger as soon as I cleared leather walking the big slugs up Herman’s body, the final round blowing his head apart sending a shower of blood and brains on the wall behind him.

I struggled to my feet and made my way to Sam and checked her for a pulse. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found it. Picking Sam up I carried her to the RV. Laying her in the bed I checked her for wounds. The only one I could find was a nasty three-inch laceration just at the hairline. I was gonna have to stitch it up. Taking a flashlight off the nightstand I checked her pupils. She didn’t seem to have a concussion, but I wasn’t a doctor so I couldn’t be for sure.
Going to the medical cabinet I found the suture kit and took out some antibacterial hand sanitizer. I decided I would do this while she was still unconscious. I had a little experience with suturing wounds. While I was in the Marines we were given a class on how to suture wounds by practicing on dead pigs. I took my time and made sure I did it right. Sam was going to be pissed enough when she came too and I didn’t need to add a shitty suturing job to the list.
After tending to Sam I tended to myself. Looking in the bathroom mirror I saw that my left cheek had already started to swell. The bone didn’t feel fractured or broken so besides icing it down there wasn’t much I could do for that. My forehead had a really nice imprint of Herman’s boot sole on it. The skin was torn in spots so I did the only thing I could do for it and cleaned it with soap and water.

I decided to make sure there were no more surprises in the shop. I left Sam a note telling her what I was doing in case she woke up. Rommel and I headed back into the shop to do a meticulous search. Thirty minutes later I was satisfied there was no other threats in the shop, or any hidden doors or basements.
I decided to take what loot I could. There was no sense in letting it all go to waste. I took the lantern, and stove first placing them under the sink in Buff’s kitchen. The two cans of camp fuel I placed in one of the outside storage bins. Herman had a small plastic container that held two large boxes of strike anywhere kitchen matches, a roll of old silver Mercury dimes, two rolls of one ounce Silver Eagles, two one ounce Gold Eagles, and twelve tenth of an ounce gold coins. I am not really sure why I took the silver and gold, but maybe one day when civilization is struggling back to its feet they may come in handy for trade. The final thing I took was his food. Herman must have like chicken noodle soup, chicken alfredo, and fruit cocktail, he had four cases of each.
Back in the RV I checked on Sam who was still out. Her breathing was steady and that gave me a little relief. I wouldn’t know if she had a concussion till later. If so we would probably head back to the lodge and delay the rescue till she healed up. I gently pulled her boots and pants off, getting her shirt off without disturbing her was a task but I managed. I covered her up with a blanket and then went to take a shower.

I took a quick hot shower and put on a pair of jogging pants and wool socks and went back to see Sam. As I entered the back bedroom she was just waking placing both hands on her temples massaging them. I turned around and went back to the medicine cabinet and got her a 750mg Lortab and a glass of water. Sam was sitting up when I came back in the room and I handed her the pill and water. She took the pill and drank all the water. She just shook her head as if in disgust and said we would have a long talk later and rolled back over and closed her eyes.

That was three hours ago and here I sit. Not sure how much trouble I am in with Sam. Should I sleep in another bed? I am scared shitless I will have another dream and have to tell Sam not only about the ones I have had, but the one I may have. I know I am not crazy as a bug-eyed bat, especially after what Herman said, but what does Sam think about all of this?

Well screw it! I am going back there and climbing in bed with her. She can kick me out if she wants. I didn’t want to lie to her. Hell I wasn’t so sure I believed it all at first, why would I expect her to. I am going to rescue those kids and if Sam doesn’t want to help I will take her back to the lodge and do it myself and let the chips fall where they may. Good night.

[dumb blonde]

Damn it boy! Pay attention! Dad knows what he's talking about!

Now MOAR please.

[streetpig1690]

September 18, 2010

Well today did not start out well that is for sure. I woke up this morning to find myself alone. I am usually a light sleeper but I guess the ass whipping I received from that old fuck Herman really got the best of me and I didn’t wake when Sam got out of bed. I checked my wounds out this morning and looking in the mirror, I am definitely going to have his boot print on my forehead for a few days.

I took my time checking over my wounds and getting dressed. I was worried I would walk into the main compartment and find a note from Sam saying, “See ya later you lying asshole.” I didn’t find a note just a plate with crumbs and an empty glass with a little juice left in the bottom sitting on the kitchenette table. Rommel’s dog food bowl was empty and he wasn’t around. I got a little pissed for a second thinking she had upped and left and took the damn dog to boot; we southern men are very particular about people fucking with our dogs or stealing them.

I calmed down a bit after taking a deep breath, no sense in getting mad and stupid about the little things. I strapped on my .45 and went out to find Sam. I found her just outside of the RV sitting on a stump, her hand stroking the back of Rommel’s head. I made my way to her and started my groveling.

She shut me down pretty fucking quickly, and called me a stupid, lying son of a bitch. Then she wanted to know how she could ever trust me again. Then I got the whole men are the scum of the earth speech women spout out in one form or another when they are really pissed. Then followed a cussing of the likes I haven’t received since I was in boot camp. Then she finally gave me the opportunity to explain myself.

I will have to admit I had to hold back on my hotheaded response before starting. It didn’t help that those big green eyes were burning holes into my skull. I am really not the type to back down from a fight, but a fight wasn’t what I was looking for so my brain kicked in thank God and reminded me of that little fact.

I basically started off with what kind of mental state I had been in not long before I found her. I told her how depressed I was and how I had actually thought, I was losing my mind over this whole zombie thing. Then I found Rommel, and then her and how much my spirits had lifted. Then I told her how when I had the dream I thought I was starting to lose it again, but that it was so real that I knew it had to be true. I really wanted to tell her but I just knew she would think I was crazier than two cats fucking in a gunnysack.

Then I dropped the other shoe about the second dream. Oh shit, you would have thought I had just slapped her and told her to fetch my slippers. Her second tirade went on for a good minute or two. For such a pretty girl she sure does have a dirty mouth when she is riled up. Then she went and stepped in it.

Nope she didn’t insult my family heritage, though I am sure that would have, come up eventually, she went and said she was so damn mad because she had a dream too and would have told me about it if only I would have told her about mine. Yep you heard it right, she had a dream too. Then it was my turn to start cussing up a storm and wanting to know what little secrets she had kept from me. It went back and forth a bit with the whole I would have told you if you had told me bullshit.

The argument ceased when Rommel let out the most God awful howling you ever heard. It startled us both enough to shut the hell up and stare at him. He finally stopped and cocked his looking at both of us like we were complete idiots. I guess the arguing was just too much for him and we were both acting like a little kids. Both of us looked at each other bit shame faced, apologized for not being honest with each other and promised one another we would be totally honest with each other, and sealed the deal with a long kiss.

Since Sam now knew about my dreams I asked her about hers. Sam said about a week before we met she had had her dream. She said she found herself in a white room and sitting at a table with her little brother Steven. Steven had told her it was important for her to find the shepherd and his dog and to help him gather people to be taken someplace safe.

I asked her why she thought I was the shepherd and did her brother mean the same people I was told to save. She said that Steven said the shepherd’s dog was smarter than a desert fox. Once she met me and heard me call out to Rommel she was almost positive I was the one. For you readers who do not know who the German Field Marshal Rommel was I will tell you. During World War II there was a very smart and capable general who fought in Africa and he was known as the Desert Fox. I guess my Rommel being a German shepherd and having the same name was the clue Steve gave to Sam so she would know just how to identify me. Of course he could have said just look for a good ole country boy named Leroy and made things simple. These damn dead folks popping up in our dreams sure like to make things complicated.

Then when I told her I was going to rescue those people she knew I was the one. She also added that her brother said that there would be others we had to gather and that we had to take the people somewhere west to be safe until the future. Apparently whatever cosmic forces in the world, good and evil, plan on fighting it out again sometime in the future after this little tussle is settled.

I told her I didn’t know about any others and had not been told about any, but maybe things were just given to us one piece at a time. On the other hand, maybe we just had to figure the rest out for ourselves. All the arguing and then talking about our dreams sure made my head hurt.

After our discussion we gave each other another hug and kiss and we went in and I had some breakfast. After eating we decided to give the area around the shop another check to ensure we had not missed anything. Inside the shop we found several large tool boxes filled with sheet metal working tools, and an assortment of others that we decided might come in handy.

The big find though was behind the shop. We found the hand pump water well so we could fill up the water reservoir on Buff. I like clean water but I really like finding loot a lot more. It never really dawned on us to ask Herman how he had gotten to his shop. Under some camo netting behind the shop was his vehicle, an old Ford Bronco II. It was in pretty rough shape, but it was loaded with gear.

We rolled the netting and set it aside, we could possibly use that one day. The Bronco yielded us with three five-gallon military jerry cans filled with gas, more camping supplies, two cases of MREs, a case of canned peaches, and two more cases of chicken noodle soup, four boxes of saltine crackers, and a plastic rifle case.

I could see why Herman had left the rifle in the truck. It was an old SKS that looked like it had been used in every war since about 1955. Apparently weapons maintenance was not on Herman’s to do list. I was going to leave the SKS but gladly took the two hundred rounds of 7.62x39 that was in an old military bandolier. While I was drooling over the ammo Sam pulled the bayonet open on the SKS and mentioned how it looked like it would puncture zombie heads quite nicely. Why didn’t I think of that? I took out the multi-tool and removed the bayonet. When we got back to the lodge I would fashion a shaft for it and we would have us another melee weapon to play with.

Shortly after we stowed away the loot it started to rain. We decided due to still being quite stiff and sore from our little brush with death yesterday that we would rest for one more day and hope the weather would clear for safer traveling. What did the two of us do for the next twenty-four hours? Well I will tell you this; it started out with a massage and ended in fireworks. Damn what a tension reliever, now we are both sore in other places, but I think we can work those kinks out later tonight.

[MaconCJ7]

I need a tension reliever.

But good story. Keep it up!

[streetpig1690]

September 21, 2010

It has been a long three days so let me catch you up to date. After sitting out the weather and letting our aches and pains abate somewhat we hit the road the next day on the 19th. We traveled at a good clip on some portions of the highway eating up the miles between our destination and us. It is strange how some sections of the highway will be clogged with the undead and wrecked vehicles while other portions seem almost normal.

The day of the 19th was fairly mundane until we reached a little crossroad called Milton’s Crossing. Milton’s Crossing was nothing more than an old country store, a garage, and a small café. Lucky for us the road rises about eight hundred or so yards from the crossroads and gave us a good view of the area. Sam and I have gotten into the habit of slowing at every turn or rise in the road in case of ambush. I was taking dad’s words to heart about evil being out to get us, and was sure somewhere along the route another ambush of some sort or another would await us.

Well it was a good thing I took dad’s words of wisdom and listened. Just before the top of the rise Sam and I exited Buff and moved over into the tree line and made our way to the crest. We both grabbed one of the Remington 700’s so we could scope the area and take a shot if need be, I also grabbed the powerful spotting scope since it would give me a more detailed look than the riflescope. I am loving the MultiCam more and more. Sam was about fifteen yards to my left and all but disappeared in the underbrush.

I got into a good prone position and set up the spotting scope. Before I finished even setting up Sam whispered to me that I wasn’t going to like what I was going to see. Damn was she right. Down below us was the crossroads with several cars pulled across the road with chunks of cinder blocks scattered about in front of it to slow or disable vehicles approaching the roadblock at high speeds.

I counted six men hanging around just behind the roadblock smoking and talking. All six were armed with rifles of one sort or another. Most appeared to have semi-auto assault type rifles, but one had a scoped hunting rifle. I am not sure why but these guys gave me a bad feeling in my gut. Their clothing was dirty, bodies and hair unkempt and they just appeared to be the type of people you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley somewhere.

I estimated the range to be around seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty yards. Sliding over to the left I picked up my rifle and adjusted the dope on the scope. I told Sam we were going to take these guys out. Sam low crawled over to my position and told me she wasn’t sure she could make the shots at this range. I tried to convince her it would be no problem and that it was only a couple of hundred more yards than the five hundred yards that we had sighted her 700 in back at the lodge. She just gave a shake of her head and said that five hundred had really been pushing it for her.

I had Sam settle in just behind my shoulder with the spotting scope. Sam was going to be my spotter. For those of you who are not in the know when you fire a round from a rifle it leaves what is called a vapor trail in its wake. A person just behind the shooter with a spotting scope can see this vapor trail all the way to the target and can have the shooter adjust his windage or elevation accordingly. For example, if you are shooting a target at five hundred yards and you hit low and left the shooter may not see the impact. However, the spotter will see right about where you hit and can tell the shooter to come up x number of inches and right x number of inches and the shooter adjusts the correction on the riflescope.

I was pleased with the elements at that moment. There was no wind around us and looking at the paper trash in the roadway there appeared to be little or no wind in the target area. In addition, the high grass between the two locations was motionless. When shooting long distances you can sometimes have wind blowing in different directions in different locations along the path of flight for the bullet. The shooter must compensate for all of this. You just don’t throw the rifle to your shoulder, line up the crosshairs and pull the trigger; ballistics can be a bitch sometimes.

My first target was going to be the guy with the hunting rifle. Of the entire group, he alone had a set of binoculars, scoped rifle, and was checking the area with the binos every so often. He was our biggest threat and therefore had to go first. Lining up the crosshairs, I checked for wind one last time. Satisfied I took a deep breath and let about three quarters of it flow out of my lungs.

The crosshairs nestled right on his neck. I wasn’t trying for a head shot. That would almost be impossible at this range for my skill level. I wanted a nice neat chest shot, the chest being my largest target. Due to the range and bullet drop I wanted to ensure I hit him in the chest cavity. I gently squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked into my shoulder.

Letting the rifle settle back down on its own I was back on target just as the bullet struck. The man double over and folded like a pocketknife to the concrete roadway. I had told Sam what my point of aim was and she advised that the round had struck about twelve inches low, just a few inches above where his belly button would be.

I took my time and controlled my breathing as I reached up with my left hand and turned the elevation dial several clicks to raise the point of impact. By the time I had got back on the scope the other men had recovered from the shock of one of their own going down and had taken cover behind the vehicles. Two of the men blindly fired their rifles in our direction, but the rounds were dropping at least three hundred yards short.

I didn’t bother to waist any rounds on the men at this point. They were well concealed and I didn’t want to waste the ammo. Getting a little impatient Sam asked me what I was waiting for. I told her to be patient and watch the man I had just shot. Sure enough about three minutes and some sporadic gunfire from our targets later the guy I had shot stood up and made his way towards the unsuspecting men who’s attention was fully forward.

One of the men turned just as the fresh zombie reached for him and a struggle ensued. None of the men seemed to intent on exposing themselves to my rifle fire, or firing at the zombie for fear of hitting one of their own. After a brief struggle the man managed to pull a pistol from his holster and shot the zombie in the head. That was my queue to fire. The man had exposed himself enough for me to take my second shot. I told Sam the point of aim was his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The round was spot on slicing through one side of his body out the other effectively dropping him right there in his tracks.

These guys had not been smart about where they had set up their roadblock, but they were fast learners. A third man exposed himself to me as he turned and fired a round into his once living friend who was now face down on the pavement. The third round I fired struck the man square between the shoulder blades sending him to the ground. Yep, fast learners. One of the men that was left shot the man where he lay, but I couldn’t see him since he shot from cover. I could see the large pool of blood spreading from the head of my third victim though.

It was about that time that Sam and I heard the snapping sound of a bullet about eight feet above us and to the right, and then the report of a large caliber rifle. That was not good. Fucking counter sniper. I had Sam start to methodically scan the buildings with the spotting scope. Two more rounds came in towards us, each closer than the next before she spotted the shooter.

This guy was good. He had to have had some military experience. Sitting in the backseat of an abandon car by the café the guy was slowly walking his rounds in on us. The front windshield of the car was missing and he sat just behind the driver’s seat. He was hard to spot because his rifle was nestled over the front seat and his head almost obscured by the headrest. The only reason Sam had spotted him was because of the muzzle flash from inside the darkened car. His forth shot was about a foot to my left and struck the ground, sending up a spray of debris. He had us and it was time to take him out. I rested the crosshairs just below the headrest and pulled the trigger. Sam and I then quickly backed out of our hide and moved to a new location about forty feet to the right.
Just as we got set back up one of the remaining three at the roadblock made a dash for store. My shot was low and I struck him just above the left ass cheek. Now that may sound like a really shitty shot, but a .308 round fully striking you anywhere will put you down with the high probability of you bleeding out if major organ or artery is struck.

I let our boy lay there and scream in pain to further demoralize the remaining two. I sipped some water and ate a granola bar as I watched through the scope for the next five minutes or so. Our runner had finally stopped screaming but was still slowly writhing on the ground in pain. I had also seen some movement in the car where the counter sniper had set up. He wasn’t shooting so I could only assume he had reanimated and was trying to figure out a way to get out of the vehicle and at his friends for some afternoon chow.

These guys sure didn’t have a lot of patience. One of them decided it was time to make a break for it. He didn’t get more than ten yards before I dropped him in his tracks, my round striking him right between the shoulder blades.

Well our last ambusher seemed to be in no mood to be anyone’s lunch. From cover he shot the wounded man, who had finally stopped moving, then the man I had just shot, and a final fuselage of fire into the vehicle of the counter sniper’s hide. A few minutes later the barrel of his rifle appeared over the hood of the car with a white pair of underwear, skid marks and all, and began being waved back and forth.

I guess he had enough. He slowly walked around to the front of the roadblock and was screaming something. I asked Sam what she thought he was saying. She seemed pretty adamant he was saying shoot me. I wasn’t so sure about that but we did have that long talk yesterday about trusting one another. Therefore, I shot him. It was a pretty good shot if I do say so myself. I struck him in the right thigh knocking his leg out from under him and sending him face first into the street, his mouth striking a broken cinderblock that lay just in front of him.

Sam ran back and got Buff fired up and honked the horn when she got parallel with my position. I took one last look over the area before running to Buff and hoping in. I laid the rifle on one of the recliners and snatched up the RPK that was loaded with a seventy-five round drum. If there was anyone else in the area, I planned on giving them a shitload of lead for their troubles.

When we got within twenty yards or so of my last victim who was steadily cussing us for shooting him as we exited Buff. Sam had her AR180 and took up a position just behind the portion of the pusher that protruded out to the side. I made my way to potty mouth and kicked his rifle, an HK91, out of reach. I then snatched his .38 revolver out of his holster and tucked it in my belt.

I got him to settle down a bit after I stuck the barrel of the RPK in his mouth and told him to shut it or suck it. Potty mouth got real cooperative after that. He said there were no more people in the area and that we had killed everyone. He said they were just some locals who were trying to protect what was theirs and that is why the roadblock was in place.

Taking a look around, the place didn’t really seem like the group was here for the long haul. I accidently stepped on his thigh and told him to try again. This time he got a hard look in his eye, spit a glob of blood on my boots and told me we were fucked. He said Big’un knew we were coming and that we were dead.

I thanked the stinking disheveled excuse for a man before me for the information. I then promptly whipped out my mace and crushed his skull. No sense in wasting a perfectly good bullet on someone who wasn’t worth half of what it cost.
I cleared the debris out of the roadway and made my way to the cars. Both had cars had good tires and I placed each in neutral and pushed them out of the way. Sam got back in Buff and pulled the vehicle into the center of the crossroads while I checked the bodies.

Sam and Rommel exited the vehicle and while Sam came over to lend a hand Rommel merrily ran about pissing on anything and everything. We got a nice collection of rifles off of the dead. They may not have taken care of themselves or clothing but their weapons were spotless. We got two .38 revolvers, a Glock 19 and Glock 17, two H&K 91s, one FN FAL, one M14, one AK 47, and one Winchester .308 with a Nikon scope off my first victim. Our counter sniper had a really nice .458 Weatherby. Well I should say it was nice. It looked like when our last gunman decided to ensure he wasn’t anyone’s lunch several of his rounds had hit the rifle destroying it. I guess it really didn’t matter since there were only eight rounds left for the rifle. All said and done we got a total of about four hundred rounds of FMJ ball .308, a hundred and ten rounds of 7.62x39 for the AK, sixty rounds of .38 and one hundred and twenty rounds of 9mm.
We checked the store first hoping to come across a lot of food but were disappointed. There were three and a half cases of MREs that the men had been eating from. There are twelve meals per case and seven were gone from the forth case which told me our ambushers had probably only been here since this morning or the night before. It didn’t seem they knew exactly when we would be coming through but it looked like they were within a five-day window with the amount of food and bottled water on hand. It was still scary that they could be within that range though.

The café and garage were in the same condition as the store, absolutely empty. It looks like Big’un and company stripped the place bare. We found their truck inside one of the maintenance bays of the garage. It was an old Chevy 1500 diesel. I turned the key, which was in the ignition to see how much fuel we could get out of it, the gauge was at about at an eighth of a tank. We decided we wouldn’t siphon any fuel out of it due to the fact that there may be a lot of debris in a truck so old in the bottom of the tank. We did take the two five gallon diesel cans of fuel from the truck bed and poured it into Buff’s tank.
After a little discussion we decided we would go through what gear the men had left in the store to look for anything that might give us a hint of what we were going into. After seeing the disgusting state of the sleeping bags, and packs we had initially passed on even touching the things. It was a good thing we did. Located on the inside pouch of one of the packs was a small map of the town we were headed to.

The map had several squares marked in red marker with the letters GP written in the center at several main intersections. Because of their placement I assumed they were probably guard posts. Right in the middle of the map in what appeared to be the town center was a square in blue with the letters HQ right in the middle. There were several other squares marked in green and yellow marker with no lettering. I assumed these may be storage, or barracks of some sort. Map in hand we headed back to Buff.

Sam got Buff turned back around and past the roadblock and I pushed the cars back in place. We drove about a mile back down the way we had come and parked Buff in a cluster of trees and used Herman’s camouflage netting to cover the side facing the direction of the roadblock. We wanted to ensure if someone came to check on the roadblock all they would find was bodies and the roadblock in place.

We both undressed and took a quick hot shower together to conserve our water and ate a light supper. We then got down to formulating our plan of attack. We decided we would park about a mile out of town and park Buff on a side road while we reconed the town from a distance. Then if we could spot where the people were being held we would try to slip in under the cover of darkness and rescue the captives. Yeah I know it isn’t very original but there are only two of us so we really don’t have many options.

The next day we left at sunrise. The area of the roadblock looked just as we had left it so hopefully no one had been around. About two miles outside of the town, I spotted a sign for a RV campground. We took the turn off and just outside the gates sat the building I saw in my dream. Thanks dad. Sam and I took care of the few shamblers we saw walking around the area before pulling Buff into the maintenance bay of the building. Getting out we pulled the large garage door down to conceal Buff.

I would really love a chance to scour this park and get needed RV parts for future repairs, but that would have to wait until another day. We were not going to take the 700’s but Sam had her Contender for precision shooting and that would have to do. Sam took her AR 180. I decided that I would take the RPK instead of my VEPR. Sam had eleven magazines giving her 330 rounds and the M&P 9mm. On my vest, I had nine AK magazines that could be used in the RPK and two extra seventy-five round drums.

I was loaded down heavy but I was worried about the opposition. If they could spare seven people for a roadblock, they might have quite a few men. Plus there was the possibility of an untold number of zombies that would most likely be in the town.

It took us almost two hours to make our way to a hill that overlooked the town. I used my new Steiner binoculars that I had retrieved from the guy at the roadblock to scan the area. I did not like what I saw.

The town probably once had a population of around fifteen hundred people. The streets were quiet as the sun rose higher into the sky. The position we were in was a good one. We could see the majority of the town and what was happening on most of the streets below us. The green squares on the map turned out to be guard posts as we suspected. Each of the guard posts had a pickup or car with two men positioned in the center of the roadway. The headquarters building turned out to be the town hall that sat on a small grassy hill in the center of town.

The town had probably once been one of those postcard looking towns. Now however, trash littered the streets. Several buildings had burned to the ground, shattered windows and glass doors seemed to be the norm now. There were three two-man foot patrols. There pattern seemed to be very random.
The guard posts were changed out about every two hours. It seemed like the men on the random patrols seemed to stay on patrol throughout the day. Every hour or so one or two of the patrols would head into the town hall for fifteen or twenty minutes and then head back out. Those on guard post and patrols seemed lackadaisical. Apparently, they had not had any serious threats in or around the town for some time.

Around ten am a large man with a protruding gut and wearing a grease stained wife beater came walking out of the front doors of the town hall. Around his waist, he had a leather western looking gun rig with a large caliber chromed handgun resting in the holster. In each hand, he held a dog leash attached to two young kids. One was a boy around ten the other was a young Asian girl around the same age. The children looked half starved and dressed in rags.
They were followed by ten adults and then finally two heavily armed guards. The adults were definitely prisoners of some sort. They were just as starved looking and ragtag as the two children. They were taken to some open ground across the street to what appeared to have been some sort of park turned into a garden. When they crossed the street, they were given hoes and rakes and were set to work weeding it. These folks were some sick nasty bastards but were smart enough to post guards, and have a garden going.

We watched the flow of activity throughout the rest of the day. They were using a café across the street from town hall as a kitchen and to feed the people. We saw folks come from the café enter and come back with canned goods from the old store next door, which was boarded up and guarded. The people in the garden were only given water four times throughout the day but were never fed.

Around five pm I watched as one of the slaves pulled a small unripe tomato off a vine and cram it in his mouth. He was spotted by one of the guards who charged through the garden screaming and butt stroked the man in the forehead as he coward down on his knees begging for mercy. The man was dragged from the garden, his body limp, and thrown out into the street.

The other guard started yelling and screaming at the other slaves forcing them out of the garden to line up on the sidewalk. As the slaves lined up the big man came down the steps of the town hall. The large man said something and the guard replied pointing down at the man who was just starting to lift himself up off the pavement. We were too far away to hear what was being said. We weren’t even able to hear what was said when large man started yelling at the man on the ground.

The injured slave struggled to his feet, his head downcast in submission, as the large man approached him. The man motioned towards the garden and then slapped the slave across the face buckling his knees. Then the big man drew his pistol and shot the slave in the eye, the back of his head exploding in a plume of blood.

Two of the slaves were shoved forward towards the dead man’s body. They each grabbed a leg and were escorted out of sight as they dragged the man behind them. The large man pulled out his two leashes and hooked them to the collars around the children’s necks and led them back towards the town hall, the remaining adults and guards trailing behind.

Sam and I backed down off the crest to our little hiding spot we made out of brush and downed tree limbs. Once we were concealed, we broke out our MREs form our packs and began to prep our supper as we discussed how we were going to free those people.

Halfway through the meal Rommel came to his feet, his body tense as he stared out into the woods behind us. As we each slowly reached for our weapons, a voice behind us asked us not to move and to make sure the dog did not charge. The male voice, with an Asian accent, said he was here for the same reason we were and asked to approach our hide.

We kept our hands in sight and I was prepared to give Rommel the command to attack as we both turned to see an Asian man, probably Chinese, of slight build, materialize out of the woods. He was dressed in woodland BDUs. His head and most of his face was covered by an OD green cloth. He wore a OD green tactical vest similar to ours. The vest had numerous gear pouches, and magazine pouches. He had some type of semi-auto pistol in a thigh rig. He carried what appeared to be an AK 47 pistol in his hands. Strapped across his back he had another rifle. I could tell it was a small caliber weapon and had a silencer attached to the end.

When the man was within six feet of us he squatted before us. He introduced himself as Ju-Long. Ju-Long said he was told to wait for us before he made his attempt to get back Fei-Yen. Now if you are as confused as I was you are probably doing the same thing I did. Holding up my hand for him to be quiet and to say “What the fuck?” Who told you to wait and just who the hell is Fei-Yen?

He then told me he had experienced the white room dream and was told that I would know what he spoke of. Before the dream, he was here to rescue Fei-Yen, a young girl and the only other survivor, beside him, of the small group they were part of. He was also told that once Fei-Yen was rescued he was to help me rescue others and take them to safety.

Sam and I exchanged glances. Hers expression said, “Hey, he is like us.” Mine I am sure said something like “See I told you that dream shit sounds crazy as hell.”

Ju said he could get us into the town hall and knew the prisoners were being held in the basement. I asked him if he had any ideas on how to get in and that there was supposed to be some sort of door that would help lead us in secretly.

Ju unfortunately knew jack shit about any secret doors. He did however say that there was a window that he knew was unlocked. He had slipped in two days ago and found the window to the basement open and that it appeared there were no guards present. You know these dead people that keep popping into our dreams are really starting to piss me off. On one hand, they want us to “fight evil” or some such shit, give us a tad bit of information and a slap on the ass and tell us to go get’um. I think if they were serious about this whole fighting evil shit they could come up with some better Intel.

I offered a spare MRE from my pack to Ju who declined. Out of his own pack, he pulled out a small bag of dehydrated Mountain House Foods, added some water and joined us in our meal. We got back to planning our little rescue.

It had started to get dark and a bit chilly as the wind picked up and the clouds moved in. Sam and I rolled up in our poncho liners to get a bit of shuteye. Ju said he would take first watch. Rommel forced his way in between Sam and I and snuggled down.

Ju woke me around twelve am. I was to wake him at four and we would make our way into town. Rommel stayed at my side the next four hours and I was glad he did. Despite being an avid outdoorsman tonight for some reason, every little noise gave me the willies.

It seemed to take forever until the clock struck four, but it finally did. Sam and Ju packed up their sleeping gear and we moved out with Ju in the lead. I will have to say one thing. Ju is like a damn ghost in the woods. It didn’t take us long to reach the first guard post. They had stayed true to their shift change schedule and we still had an hour and a half before the next change.

We planned on taking out three of the posts that were near our escape route. We would use Ju’s silenced Ruger 10-22 to put the guards down if we were unable to take them out with a knife. Unfortunately, the two guards at the first post seemed wide-awake and we were going to have to use Ju’s .22.
I know some of you in the future reading this may think that using the silenced .22 would be smarter than a knife. The silencer does not totally get rid of the sound. You still have the clacking of the bolt and the sub-sonic report of the round. While the .22 is pretty damn quiet there is still some sound, and sound travels a great distance at night.

Ju crawled forward and leveled the rifle. He waited until both men faced away from him so that he could hopefully get a shot in the back of the head, which was more likely to succeed than a frontal shot with a .22 due to the density of the front of the skull. Both men were dropped quickly. We held our breath and waited praying no one heard the clatter of the bolt or the two guards’ rifles dropping to the pavement.

No one came to investigate and we moved forward to ensure both were dead. I stabbed one in the eye and Sam did the same to the other. One of the guards carried an AK. So I relieved him of his five magazines and gave Ju two of them. The second man was armed with a semi-auto hunting rifle chambered in .243. We didn’t have anything in that caliber so we left it and his ammo.

Halfway to the second guard post one of the random patrols came our way. Ju had already made it across the road and Sam and I were stuck on the opposite side hiding behind a cluster of large trees. As luck would have it, one of the guards had to take a piss and headed our way. As the man started to relieve himself on the tree Sam hid behind, Ju snuck up behind his waiting partner and sunk his blade into the man’s kidney.

The man did not have his rifle on a sling and dropped it to the road when Ju stabbed him. The noise of the rifle hitting the road made the second man turn to see what had happened. I chose that moment to come out from behind the tree I was behind and crush the man’s skull with my mace. Both men were drug out of sight. One was relieved of the three loaded magazines he had for his AR 15 and they were given to Sam. The other man was armed with a shotgun. I found fifteen rounds of double ought buck in a small pouch and pocketed them. I had not brought many rounds for my sawed of shotgun and thought a few more may come in handy.

The fog and a drizzling rain rolled in a short time later. This was a added bonus for us since it would reduce the guards’ visibility and allow us to move in more areas that are open. The next two guard posts went down like clockwork. They were wet and miserable and just waiting for the relief guards and paying no attention to their surroundings.

We were able to make it to the backside of the town hall without incident or being spotted. Ju found the window he had told us about and we slid it open. The drop to the floor was about six feet and I had to ease Rommel down into Ju’s waiting arms so he wouldn’t be hurt. I don’t think either one of them liked that too much.

Just as we made it into the room, we could hear two men talking as they walked by on the street their flashlights searching back and forth. We held our breath and prayed they wouldn’t see the open window. Luckily they seemed more interested in conversation than looking for people slipping around up to no good. Once their voices faded into the distance Sam climbed on my shoulders and eased the window down.

We were in some sort of storage room that was about ten by ten. Pulling out a small red lens flashlight, I cupped a palm over it and let some of the light seep out between my fingers and checked the room out. In the corner was a stepladder. I had Ju open it up and place it by the window. Instead of trying, to sneak folks out of a door that may be guarded we could bring the people back here and go up and through the window, unless one of the prisoners knew of an unguarded way to leave the building.

Once in the hallway we made our way down the hall. As we approached an open door we could hear, two men laughing and the slap of a hand hitting flesh, and whimpering of a woman. I approached the door, stopped and pulled out my mirror. The mirror was one of those little ones you find in auto parts stores that are attached to a collapsible antenna.

Easing the mirror around the doorframe, I could see one man looking to his right. To his right was a man with his back to me with his pants around his ankles and thrusting his hips back and forth. I could just make out a leg and part of an ass cheek the man was gripping. One of the men made the comment that Big’un had to get them some new girls because the whores like the one they were fucking were all used up.

Fucking rapist, I can’t stand them. I slid my mace out and charged around the corner. The guard who had been watching his buddy screw the helpless woman caught my mace with his teeth. It didn’t knock him out but it did shatter out his front teeth and knocked him backwards out of his chair.

The second man spun around in all his glory, a look of shock on his face. I swung up with the mace demolishing his testicles and driving them up into his stomach. I swung the mace overhand and into his forehead caving it in and dropping him backwards to land between the woman’s legs, her ass still in the air and she didn’t even move.

Sam rushed in and took the woman and spun her around and pulled her from the bed. Ju came in and finished off the first guard driving the point of his blade into the man’s eye. I slid the mace back in the scabbard and pulled out the RPK from its slung position and took up a guard position at the door.

The woman was terrified but Sam was able to calm her. She got her dressed first before starting to question her. Once dressed we found out her name was Judie. Judie said the other prisoners were just down the hall in a locked room. She said Dave had the keys as she pointed down to the man that had been raping her. Ju dug the keys from the man’s pockets.

We told Judie to follow us and point out the room and that we were going to get them out of there. It appeared that getting them out of there and making it the mile or so through the town and woods back to Buff was going to be harder than I expected. Judie was very weak and did not appear to move well. Her hair was matted, eyes sunken in to her head, she was starving to death. Hopefully she was the only one in this sorry state.

As we drew closer to the room, we started smelling the stench of dirty unwashed bodies and human waste. Sam unlocked the door as Ju and I faced opposite directions down the hall scanning for danger. Sam opened the door and stepped inside. I suddenly heard her begin to retch, vomit splattering to the floor. She staggered backwards out of the room.

Being the man I am I took her place and stepped in. So much for being the man that I am because I tossed up my entire supper. Wiping the spittle and remnants of vomit off my chin. I looked into the room to see a group of people with wide confused eyes. I told them who I was and said I was here to rescue them and to follow me.

They were hesitant till Judie stepped up beside me and told them to hurry. We herded the group back to the storage room. The ladder in place and the window opened Sam was out first and checking the surrounding area for danger. One at a time, the group moved up the ladder. These folks were killing me. Not just with the stench of their bodies but just how slow they were moving. This group was starved, weak and defeated.

Finally, it was my turn. Moving up the ladder was a bit troubling for me. The stench of the bodies before me lingered in the air and I kept dry heaving. Outside it was a tad better since the light breeze and possibly the rain helped keep the stink down.

Once Ju was up and out, we started off. Thankfully Judie was the only in such a terrible weakened state that it hampered her movement. Two of the men helped her to walk as we slipped through the darkness.

About where we had dispatched the roving guards we suddenly heard yelling and screaming followed by a flare shooting off in the distance near the third guard post we had taken out. Sam led the way as Ju and I fell back covering our rear.

The group had just slipped into a cluster of trees and bushes that were centered in a large yard when a pickup came around the corner. The truck had its bright lights on in addition to four very bright running lights on a roll bar. Ju and I were caught like the proverbial deer in the headlights. We both reacted about the same time. I brought the RPK up to my shoulder Ju extending the AK pistol out in front of him with both hands.

The driver of the truck floored the gas pedal, the tires spinning on the wet pavement as it surged forward. Both of our rounds peppered the driver’s side windshield until one of us lucked out striking the driver causing him to jerk the wheel to the left and slam the truck into a telephone pole. We slowly approached the truck to make certain the occupants were dead and couldn’t point out our route of escape to others, not that the rapid gunfire hadn’t gave them a good idea.

The passenger door opened and a man staggered out a pistol in hand. I cut him down with four rounds to the chest. I made my way to the driver’s side to see the man behind the wheel roll his head in my direction. His face was bloody and one eye was already swelling shut. He was fading fast but I helped him along with a round to the chest. I jerked the door open and pulled the driver from his seat and put him down on the sidewalk. Ju gave me a funny look and I told him we would leave the two to reanimate and maybe give their friends something to think about. We turned and ran to catch up to the others.

We moved along through backyards and alleyways and were almost to the town limits and the woods we needed to disappear into to make it back. A couple of blocks left to go and we had come up alongside of a convenience store. We were going to have to cross an open area of about fifty yards to make it to the next set of buildings and then to the trees. Sam ran across first while Ju and I covered left and right.

Once Sam was across, we sent the two children and four of the adults. What I really wanted to do was just have everyone rush across at once. I was getting antsy; the sky was starting to lighten with false dawn. I had to control that urge and do things right. Get the first group across with Sam in case the next group or Ju and I were compromised, at least some might escape and live instead of everyone dying in one big batch.

Just as the second group of prisoners got about halfway across the open field automatic gunfire erupted to my left. Geysers of mud and water exploded around the five adults as they fled for their lives. Then the gunner took out two of them sending them in twisted heaps down onto the muddy field.
I stepped out from cover and saw a truck with a machinegun mounted to the roll bar lurching forward, the machine gunner blazing away. The RPK was bucking against my shoulder as I fired a barrage of hot lead at them. I was too late. The last two prisoners were gunned down, their emaciated bodies ripped to shreds.

Ju and Sam added their guns to the party peppering the windshield of the truck with bullets. As the truck drew closer, it suddenly started to slow, the horn letting out a continuous loud blare. Sam took out the machine gunner as he directed his fire towards me and Ju.

Running to the truck, I saw that the driver was dead, his chest ripped apart and half of his head blown away. I screamed to Sam to get everyone to the truck. The group sprinted back across the field and started to jump in the back. I jumped into the driver seat after pulling the man from behind the wheel ending the honking of the horn as his face came off of the steering wheel.

The children were loaded up front with me and the rest piled in back. I tore through the muddy field accidently running over one of the dead prisoners. Halfway back to the RV park, I checked the side view mirror to see a car, followed by two trucks loaded with men in the back.

The car began to speed up taking the curves at a faster rate than either I or the other trucks could manage. When the car was within about thirty yards, the front passenger and one of the rear passengers hung out the windows and began to take aim with their pistols. Sam and Ju dumped a magazine apiece into the passenger compartment of the car. The car began to wildly fishtail, slinging the man hanging out of the rear window from the car, his body flipping and twisting like a rag doll as it slammed into the pavement. The car finally lost total control and rolled over onto its roof and sliding off the road.

We finally made it to the front of the RV park where we had parked Buff. One of the trucks pulled into the lot approximately fifty yards away, armed men piling out. Some began to fire immediately pinning our group behind the truck thirty feet from the door and the relative safety of Buff. We returned fire hitting one of the men before he could get behind cover. I was slapping a fresh drum into the RPK and saw Sam hand one of the men her pistol and he joined in the fight as the other adults cowered.

As I came up to fire off a few rounds, I saw the second truck roll in. The huge man that had been leading the children around with leashes looked back at the driver of his truck and yelled something as he pointed off to my right. I fired a few rounds at the moving truck unable to hit the big man. I had to take cover quickly though as those in the back of the truck added their fire to the others as they sped out of sight and to our flank.

I told Ju and Sam what I saw and that I was going to try to make it around the back of the building. Sam yelled at me to go as she and Ju rose up to put down some covering fire while I made my break. Bullets slammed into the concrete wall near my head sending slivers of concrete slicing into my face. Gritting my teeth I ran harder till I made it out of the line of fire. I managed to make my way to another nearby building in time to see the big guy’s truck come around the corner.

I didn’t dither around and opened up with the RPK. The truck skidded to a halt and men poured out of the back returning fire. My first thought was oh shit I didn’t think this out to well. My second thought was to take fucking cover just about the time the big guy opened up full auto with what looked like a belt fed weapon.

I leaped to the left ramming my shoulder into a closed door on the side of the building. The door burst inward as I propelled my body through it and into the building. Glancing through the partially opened blind, I saw four men charging towards the building. I unloaded on the men firing through the blinds and closed window. All four tumbled into heap dead or dying.

The big guy didn’t seem too happy about that and fired back at me. Rounds chewed through the wall, the blinds tumbling from the widow as the rounds came screaming through it. I dove for cover sliding into the wall. As I rolled over onto my back trying to make my ass crawl into the cracks in the floor I got a little surprise. Coming around the corner was a fucking zombie. I started to lift the RPK and fire but the bastard with the machinegun took care of him for me as he blindly fired through the walls. The body of the zombie jerked and twisted as the rounds struck his body. Finally, one hit him in the head sending him tumbling backwards into the hallway. I crossed fingers and toes and prayed there were no more in the small building. It sure would have sucked to get caught between that big fat bastard with a machinegun and a room full of zombies.

The big guy slowed his rate of fire and started sending controlled burst through the wall and window. I slithered on my belly over to the door came up on a knee and leaned out and began returning fire. I caught the last two of his henchmen with multiple shots to the legs and chest. That big fat bastard lucked out as I saw him ducking and opening the feed tray of the machinegun, making it behind the engine block of the truck before I could put lead into his fat as.
I started to stand my rifle still at my shoulder. I was about to step out and charge the truck and get this little gun fight finished and head back to help my friends, I could still hear gunfire coming from that direction, when fat bastard popped up and began firing as he came around the truck. I did my best to return fire but there was a shit load of lead coming my way.

Retreating back into the building, he kept firing sending his rounds through the wall. I returned the favor shooting right back through the wall, as I kept moving deeper into the room. I don’t know who ran out of ammo first, me or him. When I realized I was empty, I began scrambling to get an extra drum out of the pouch. I looked up just in time to see the fucker diving through the remainder of the shattered glass window. Who says white men can’t jump? That big fuck came right through the window and rolled up to his feet with the biggest meat cleaver I have ever seen.

I dropped the empty RPK and for the life of me, I will never know why I did it but I pulled out my fucking mace. Not my pistol and not my fucking sawed off shotgun. I was now face to face with Big’un, or so the tattoo said on his forehead. Damn the fucker was huge. He had to be all of six foot four and three hundred and fifty pounds of badass. He didn’t say shit, just bellowed in rage as he raised that meat cleaver and swung for my head. I won’t go into all the details about the fight but I will tell you it wasn’t like some damn kung fu movie with back flips, and karate chops. It was short and fucking brutal the way most fights are when deadly weapons are brandished.

I got a nasty cut down the left side of my face laying open the skin from my eyebrow almost down to my upper lip. As far as Big’un is concerned, I shattered his shin and sent him face down on the floor and bashed his head into a pulp. I will admit that I went a little over board and continued to beat the shit out of his body and limbs till I could barely lift the mace and my senses came back to me.

I put the mace back in the scabbard and stumbled over to my RPK and picked it up. I am not sure how long it took my trembling hands to work in the new drum but I finally accomplished the task and charge the weapon.

I made my way to the door intent to help my friends only to see Sam and Rommel come running towards me. I caught Sam in my free arm holding the RPK down towards the ground with my right. Between her kisses and fawning, I managed to ask her about the other bad guys. She said they were all dead and led me back to the garage.

Ju was just backing Buff out of the garage as we approached. Looking over towards the truck that was now riddled with bullet holes I saw two of the prisoners laying dead. Both had bullet wounds to the chest and legs and one right between the eyes. I guess Sam or Ju made sure they wouldn’t be coming back.

Climbing on board I saw that the two children were safe, as well as a twenty something man and woman. Just the four, that was all that was left. There were several rifles and ammo cans over in one corner I assumed Ju must have picked them up off of the dead slavers. Sam helped me into one of the recliners and went up front with Ju for a moment and was back at my side with a first aid kit in hand, as Buff started moving forward. Turning my head for Sam to treat my wound I could see dozens of zombies clogging the road coming our way. Ju steadily increased his speed and plowed through them.

Sometime during the trip home, Sam got me up out of the recliner, stripped me, and sat me in the shower. She poured cold water over me from a water jug and began to scrub my body clean. Apparently, all the water that was in the hot water heater of the RV was used up bathing our four new friends.

I don’t remember the rest of the drive home I must have slept the entire way. The trip back was quick since we had cleared all the obstacles in our path on the first leg of the journey. I woke up a few hours ago and it is late afternoon. While I slept, Ju and Sam had made a scavenging run and got new clothes and boots for our new guest. Both of the adults wore loose clothing, I guess so they could fill them out once they started eating, and each had a pistol on their hip. I suppose they don’t intend on being taken captive again.

Speaking of our guest, we of course have Fei-Yen who likes to be called Fei. Bobby Archer is the boy with sandy blonde hair. Chris Parker, who stands around six foot one, has black hair and blue eyes. Looking at his frame and bone structure, he was once a pretty good size man. He was also the one who got the pistol from Sam during the shootout. Alex Carpenter is the woman. She is about five foot four, black hair and brown eyes. She has looks to have one of those down home cute girl next-door faces. We will see once she gets some meat on her bones.

The four thanked me profusely once I came down stairs. I laughed and told them it was a walk in the park. Sam had fixed us dinner and we all sat down to eat. Unfortunately, the four that were rescued had to settle for a light soup till their bodies were able to handle eating regularly. They didn’t seem to care. They were clean, eating and were going to sleep in real beds tonight.

Also during dinner, I found out that Chris had been in the Army infantry with the 82nd. Alex had been a paramedic in Houston and had been home visiting family when the shit hit the fan. My new best bud Ju it turns out was a Marine in Taiwan before moving to the states and taking up residence with family in the small Chinese community just outside of Westfield.

That pretty much sums up our rescue operation. I am still dog-tired and I am going to go up stairs and strip down and crawl in bed. Good night all.

[streetpig1690]

I didn't have time to read over this entry so sorry about any glaring mistakes.
September 23, 2010

I am not really sure I am going to like having Ju-Long around. Little bastard is working me to death. I am just kidding; the guy is a bundle of energy though. He joined Sam and me the past two mornings for our workout. He is small but his endurance is phenomenal, seems like he can do pushups and pull-ups for days. Turns out he has a black belt in some form of karate, I forgot which, and has been helping Sam and I with a few basic moves. He is also improving our techniques with melee weapons. Our four new additions didn’t join in; they are still way too weak. I really don’t expect the kids to join in but from the way little Bobby watches us I am sure he will want in.

Seems like my old daddy was right about Asian folks. He didn’t like them, any of them from anywhere. He did three tours in Viet Nam, and lumped all Asians together. He did however respect the hell out of them. He said they were smart as a whip, and the sneakiest most devious bastards that you could ever meet and should never be underestimated. Ju is proving to be all of that. During our little hand-to-hand lesson, the devious bastard put me on my ass more times, than I can count, LOL. Besides being able to put me on my ass with various forms of duplicity, he also can draw fairly well and has drawn up some plans for the wall and incorporated a few new things. The guy has brains that’s for sure.

Ju agreed with Sam and me about the wall. He too had been caught in a small horde of several hundred zombies and had seen one he said that had thousands. The lodge couldn’t hold back hundreds of zombies let alone thousands. The wall was a priority. Ju had said he had seen two semi trucks loaded down with untreated railroad ties just outside of Westfield. He wanted the ties and said that there were enough that we could build sturdy protective guard towers and a heavy-duty building to house Buff in instead of just making some sort of awning with a gate.

It was going to take three of us to get the rigs and I wasn’t sure if Chris and Alex were up to staying and guarding the lodge. I sure as hell knew they probably were not up for a run. We sat down and talked with the two to see if they could manage guarding the lodge and the kids. Chris flat out laughed his ass off at that. He said he may be weak and malnourished but he could handle pulling guard duty. He said he and Alex would stay inside with the outer barricades shut. If trouble showed up, they would send the kids upstairs hold out until we came back and if they had to retreat upstairs, they would shut the barricades on the stairs and hold out up on the balcony.

Chris and Alex would be armed with the Glock 19 and 17 we had just recently picked up. For rifles, since both were still fairly weak they would use the lightweight Armalight AR 180B’s from Sam’s place. With Chris being former military, he set up Alex’s and his tactical vests with mag pouches and utility pouches. I took both out back to get them familiar with the weapons system. The AR 180B is very similar to the M16 and Chris adjusted to it right away and had his rifle sighted in quickly, and then started practicing disassembly, and reassembly of the weapon.

Alex was a different story. She said she had dated a police officer and he had taught her to shoot a pistol and she had gotten pretty good. However, she said she had never fired a rifle before. I decided to see how she did with the pistol first. Pulling out her Glock 19, Alex got into an excellent shooting stance; her grip also looked textbook perfect. She fired all eighteen rounds at a paper plate target fifteen yards away putting just about all the rounds in a three-inch group. Her last six started to spread out and scatter a bit and firing the pistol seemed to really tire her and her forehead had broken out into a sweat. She reloaded the pistol with a fresh mag and holstered. Her cop ex-boyfriend did a damn good job training her.

It took Alex about sixty rounds to start hitting the paper plates at seventy-five yards. It really wore her out but if she was firing from inside she could at least use things to help support the rifle while she fired. After she was done firing, she said she was going to lay down and nap before we left. This really worried me but Chris seemed very capable despite his weakened condition.

With Chris and Alex, set up we loaded the F350 and headed out. We were leaving Rommel home with the others as an added security layer. He wouldn’t take commands from any of them but he really seemed to like Fei and Bobby, so I believe he would protect them if it became necessary.

The drive over to the rigs took about twenty minutes, zombie foot traffic was light and we didn’t have any issues to contend with. Once on location we exited the truck and had to dispatch six zombies that were walking around the two rigs with our melee weapons. The rig in front was empty with the driver door open. There was dried blood on the seat but other than that, it appeared empty. I climbed up on the step of the second rig and pulled out my K-Bar fighting knife. The driver was a zombie. Chip, that’s what his nametag said, was still strapped in and the window was rolled down. I told Chip I was sorry, but he was fired and his rig was being impounded and stabbed him through the temple killing him. Things are tough now days; they don’t issue pick slips, just a bite, knife, or a bullet.

Ju had climbed in the first rig and tried to get it started, no love there. It turned over several times and belched some smoke from the stacks but that is all. After tossing Chip to the pavement, I hopped in the second rig and tried to turn it over. It too belched smoke and turned over several times with no luck. I hopped out cursing our luck and saw that Ju was lifting the hood up on his rig.

I went over to see what he was up to. Apparently, Ju knew a bit about diesel engines. I grabbed him a toolbox out of the truck and handed it over to him. Ju worked on the first rig for about twenty minutes and finally got it running. He then started on the second rig while Sam and I continued to watch over him. The sound of the first diesel engine running started to draw several zombies to our position. Sam and I moved as a team, one distracting a zombie and the other smashing his brains in.

Things were beginning to get a little hectic as more zombies approached. We backed over to Ju and told him to hurry the hell up. He never raised his head or said a word; he just raised his fist and gave us the middle finger and went back to work. Maybe in Taiwan when someone displays the middle finger it means one minute, cultures are so different sometimes. I guess it doesn’t really matter Ju finished up with my rig just as Sam and I had to go to our rifles and take out a knot of eight zombies that had wandered up together.

Sam hauled ass back to the truck and dropped two zombies with rifle fire in the process. Everyone was loaded and we headed for the lodge. I don’t know where the hell all the zombies came from but the bastards must still be using cell phones or some such shit and calling ahead to their buddies to let them know when we are coming. Sam had to slow and allow Ju to pass her so that he could use the eighteen-wheeler to clear a path. The road had more zombies on it than flies on a fresh pile of dog shit. I guess we couldn’t have been lucky enough not to run into so many, the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.

It was a good thing we had the eighteen-wheelers to get through the last batch. There had to be at least seventy to eighty of them all knotted up in the middle of one intersection. Ju had accelerated up to about sixty or sixty-five when he hit the group. They were crushed and scattered in every direction and we made it through as easy as sliding off a greasy log backwards.

The zombies cleared out and finally disappeared all together by the time we got back to the lodge. All told, the trip only took an two hours and it was just about time for lunch. Chris, Rommel and the kids came out of the lodge to greet us with smiles on their faces. Chris actually looked kind of relieved and said something about how surprised he was that we had returned so quickly. I think despite his bravado Chris is still feeling weak and not confident is his abilities. I believe that will change of course, as he grows stronger. Alex was inside brewing up lunch.

Over lunch, we told the others about the mass of zombies we had to smash through just to get home. The others glanced around the table nervously when we told them. Chris asked about the partial wall I had built out front and wanted to know why it was so close to the lodge. I explained to him that for starters, I was the only one building it at the time, and secondly I intended it to eventually be an inner wall if I someday got around to building another larger wall further out. He commented on the fact that the wall was only five feet high and that most folks could just climb right over it. I explained to him that I was going to use the backhoe to dig a trench about six feet deep and eight feet wide around the fence so that zombies, who have not shown the ability to climb so far, would fall in and I could shoot them at my leisure.

Ju recommended that on the one thirty foot section I have completed that we take the fifteen foot long longs and go straight out and then around giving us a total of forty five foot area away from the lodge. That way when we built the building to house Buff we would have a good ten foot area between the garage and the lodge and wouldn’t have to squeeze by when walking around that side. We all agreed.

As we finished up lunch, we decided time was of the essence and to get started on the wall. Chris said he had some experience working with heavy machinery and could operate the Cat. While Sam, Ju and I put the logs that I had cut into seven foot lengths for post in he would start digging the trench. It was also decided that the dirt from the trench would be piled in front of the wall between it and the trench. That would effectively give us an eleven foot wall from the base of the trench to the top of the dirt berm.

It took most of the day to place the post into the ground and get them secured. Chris did an excellent job with the backhoe. A really cool thing he did was to dig the trench about twenty feet from the existing wall. This was the area we had planned on putting the two fifteen foot sections to give us more depth. He left about an eight foot wide section pointing directly at the center of the wall effectively making a bridge. He explained that once the fifteen foot sections were in place we could build another thirty foot section to match the existing wall and put gates in the center of each. That way smaller vehicles such as the F350 could come across and then park by the lodge. That would mean if we were attacked by raiders they would have to breach two gates and once they breached the first they would be inside a nice neat kill zone until they breached the second.

We were all exhausted by the end of the day and hit the showers. We ate supper and it was time to get some sleep as the night set in. Tomorrow we were going to be busy as a stumped-tail cow in fly time. For you Yankees and city dwellers that is a southern expression meaning we were gonna be busy as hell.

September 29, 2010

Well it has been a few days but I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to sit down and write. Our fortifications are almost complete. I welded some eyebolts to the bucket of the backhoe and we used chains to lift the logs into place, guided by those on the ground. It was hard work but not exhausting. Chris operated the backhoe while Ju, Sam, and I guided and placed the logs. Alex, with Rommel at her side, patrolled around the lodge. The kids entertained themselves by watching a few movies on the DVD player. I normally don’t like to run things during the day so the batteries can charge from the solar array. I know it didn’t drain much, if any juice from the batteries, with the sun out but I don’t want to get folks into the habit of burning electricity during the day time unless necessary. It was necessary though just to keep them occupied.

The wall is finished. It is approximately one hundred and fifty feet by one hundred and fifty feet. We have cut the openings for the gates in the walls. Alex came up with a neat idea that we will implement once we off load all the railroad ties. At the first gate opening, we plan on flipping the trailers from the eighteen-wheelers onto their sides. We will place one on each side of the gate, dig a trench around it and pile the dirt around it like the rest of the wall. This will in effect force anyone attempting to breach the gate into a funnel in which only one vehicle at a time my enter. If that vehicle is taken out, it becomes an obstacle to other vehicles.

Building the wall seemed to go a lot smoother and faster than building Buff’s garage. We have all the posts set and the walls framed, but no roofing as of yet. We have the walls completed. We of course used the railroad ties. We staggered them as you would if laying brick. To help secure them we drilled holes in certain sections and bolted them to the framing posts. We also used metal straps to band sections of ties together. We also essentially built an outer wall in the same manner as the defense wall around it. Once the ties are weather proofed, we will back fill the area in between with dirt.

We are going to have to head back to the home where we got Buff and dismantle the roll up garage door on the RV barn there. We will need it to use as a door on our new garage. We will need to use one of the eighteen-wheelers with the flatbed trailer to bring the door back. We could search for a large flatbed truck but we really don’t wish to go out and waste time on a search, which may come up empty.

Tomorrow we are going to make a run to the garden center and pick up bags of rye grass. We have to get some grass on the berms once they are in place to help hold them if heavy rains come in. We will follow up with the run to the house to get the door. Ju wants our finally destination to be a hardware store he knows of to empty it out of all the tools and fasteners we can get. Ju has added that we need to hit the trailer fabrication shop where we got the metal for Buff and clear it out since it is on the way.

September 30, 2010

We had a bit of an argument this morning. It wasn’t heated or hateful, just a disagreement really. Chris was dead set on starting to dig out the trench. Thankfully, Alex jumped in and told Chris if the noise of the backhoe attracted a large number of zombies she may not be able to handle them on her own if Chris became trapped in the backhoe or killed. Our new members are all getting stronger, but Alex is recovering slower than the rest.

Chris finally relented but I think he really needs to accomplish some things to rebuild his confidence. I think it will be at least another week or two before we can take him on a run. Even then, he will have to be relegated to standing guard outside, he just isn’t strong enough yet to shoot and loot.

The garden center was our first stop. It went smoothly. The area was fairly clear of zombies and we chose to just gun those that were close to us down and move into the store where the grass seed was located. There was only one new zombie inside. She stood behind a cash register and I put her down with a double tap to the head from my .45. I wonder if she used to work there.

Ju grabbed a dolly and we took every bag of grass we could find. The rye grass should take well with the cool fall weather and rain. I am personally hoping the St. Augustine grass will take hold in the spring; I have always loved that type of grass.

The run to the metal store went even smoother. There were four new zombies in the parking lot and Ju just ran them down. Sam stood guard on top of the rig to get a good view of the area and also so, she wouldn’t be snuck up on while Ju and I hauled out all the remaining metal sheets, angle iron, and every container that held an assortment of fasteners. Only two more zombies came up during the loading operation and Sam just climbed down and took them out with her hammer.

Once we arrived at the home where we had retrieved Buff, Sam noticed that in the yard across the street had kids toys, and both girls and boys bicycles in the front yard. Sam wanted to check it out first and see if they had anything the kids could use, namely shoes and clothing. Ju and I were against the idea but Sam just put her hands on her hips with one of those stubborn looks women seem to get when they want something and intend to get it. Ju and I decided to just get it over with so we could get back to the matter at hand.

We circled the house and searched for any threats and found none. We did see some movement inside but couldn’t make out how many zombies we were going to be dealing with. Ju would stand guard during this search. I could tell he was bit pissed about going off plan to search for clothing and shoes. I am sure he wanted the kids to have these things, but the kids won’t need clothes if they are dead because zombies overran the house.

The front door was unlocked and Sam and I slowly moved inside. The door opened directly into the living room. Sam moved left and pulled the cord on the shades to open them up and let some light into the room. The room looked like it could have been in a fancy magazine at one time. Now though, the living room was in shambles. Empty food cans, blankets, melted candles, dirty napkins, and empty cereal boxes now littered the place. It looked like one or more of the family members had tried to survive but hadn’t. We knew they hadn’t, we could smell the now familiar smell of the undead in the house.

We moved into the dining room and kitchen area. They too were in much the same shape as the living room. We were both tense, we had seen movement from the outside, and could smell the undead on the inside; we just hadn’t found them yet. We worked our way to a wide hallway that led to several closed doors and a few open ones. This house wasn’t quite as big as the one across the street; it was roughly four thousand square feet.

We came to the first door. I rested my hand on the door knob and waited for Sam to give me the nod. She took a deep breath and gave me the nod. I pushed the door open and Sam made entry with me close on her heels. The bedroom belonged to a girl. In the center of the floor was the decomposing body of a girl between the ages of 11-13 I really couldn’t tell.

Sam was the first out of the bedroom and I almost ran into her as she came up short. I looked over her shoulder to see a young boy about 12 years old. He looked almost normal except the missing chunk of flesh on his left arm. He was steadily walking towards us and still Sam did not fire, she just stood there.
As I came around her dropping the rifle to hang on its sling, I began drawing my 1911. The boy attacked Sam knocking her into me. Our legs got tangled up somehow or another and I fell forward, and Sam fell backwards. The pistol fell from my hand and slid out of reach as it hit the hard marble floor. As I pushed forward trying to scramble to my feet I looked back to see the boy mounted across Sam’s chest. One of her arms pinned by the boy’s knee her other holding onto his throat trying to keep him from biting her.

I spun my body around and clambered to my knees and grabbed the boy under his armpits and twisting my body and falling backwards, I pulled him off of her landing on his back pinning him. I fumbled for my knife. Finally grasping the hilt I pulled it free and drove it into his temple, his body relaxed as life left his body.

I lifted my head as I sensed movement in front of me to see a zombie dropping to his knees, arms outstretched, mouth wide open to bite me when I heard a gunshot and a bullet pierced his forehead and blew the back of his skull out. The body landed on top of me and I scrambled and flailed to get the body off of me. Once free I came up to me knees I turned to look at Sam who was still on her back with her pistol in her hand, smoke drifting up out of the barrel a shocked look on her face and tears running down her cheeks.

Rising to my feet, I reached down and helped her to stand. She was sobbing her pistol held limply in her right hand. I gave her a hug and told her it was alright. She said she just couldn’t pull the trigger on the boy. She promised over and over it would never happen again and that she was sorry.
I didn’t give her any grief about it, I could understand. I had trouble shooting undead children myself. Giving her one last hug and squeeze, I turned and picked up my pistol and holstered it and told her to follow me and clear the rest of the house.

The rest of the house was clear of the undead. We found another dead child the same age as the girl. Looking at the pictures on the wall, they looked to have been twins. The zombie Sam had killed in the hall was around fifteen. We found the parents in the master bedroom laying side by side on the bed, two empty pill bottles by their sides. What shitty parents! They left a teenage boy to care for three younger siblings. Not sure how any of the kids got infected. One probably went out for supplies or to find help and had gotten bit and came back home infecting the entire family.

There was nothing left as far as food was concerned they had eaten it all. There were a few bottles of water left but that is about it. Sam and I grabbed a box of contractor size trash bags out of the garage and headed back to the bedrooms. We emptied the kids’ closets and drawers of all the clothes and shoes. We also took all the jeans, socks, tennis shoes, and boots from the parents’ closet. I also liberated two waist length brown leather jacket that looked like it would fit. After seeing Sam wearing hers when I found her I still think, it would be a great idea for everyone to wear one to protect from bites. I think these two would fit Ju and me but not Chris when he put some body mass back on.

Once we cleared the house of anything useful, we did find about twenty rolls of toilet paper (another thing we were going to have to stock up on now that there was seven us.) several new toothbrushes and toothpaste and a few over the counter drugs, we threw the items in the sleeper of the rig. Ju seemed relieved that we were getting back on track with the mission. So far, no other zombies had come into sight.

It took roughly an hour and a half to dismantle the garage door. It took another thirty minutes for us to manhandle the damn thing onto the trailer and get it strapped down. It didn’t help that quite a few zombies came shambling in on us and forced us all to engage them with melee weapons just to make certain we kept quite enough not to attract more.

We loaded up and headed for the lodge. We crossed our fingers and said a quick prayer that our run back would be like the last. Everything was strapped down but if we ran into another horde we might not only lose a tire or be disabled, we could lose some of our loot.

We came to a sudden stop about as we came around the bend in the road leading to the lodge. Our mouths hung open when we saw that the fifty yards leading up to the new wall was littered with dead zombies. Ju let out the clutch and we slowly approached the wall crushing bodies underneath the tires.
We all exited the cab rifles at the ready as we crossed the bridge. There were at least thirty dead zombies in front of the lodge, Several hanging in the barbwire of the barricade on the front porch, their heads blown apart. We yelled for Chris and Alex and the front door slowly opened. Alex and Chris slowly walked out followed by the children. Chris and Alex held their rifles, Bobby held a 10-22 and Fei held my Ruger MKII pistol. All of them except Chris looked a bit pale. Chris actually looked as if he had been rejuvenated.

According to Alex and Chris about an hour after we left they had all come outside to get some air and let the kids run around and be kids. The kids were throwing a ball for Rommel to fetch when he suddenly stopped in mid-run and turned to face the area of the bridge growling. Alex hustled the kids back inside and sent them upstairs while Chris stood watch at the wall.

By the time, Alex came back and joined Chris at the wall with their tactical vests in hand a horde came out through the woods and around the bend in the road. Chris had to lean a ladder on the wall to be able to see over it. They began to start putting lead down range taking out zombies. As the zombies started coming across the bridge they ran back to the lodge and shut the barricades.

Sometime while Alex and Chris were firing at zombies from behind the front porch barricades Bobby and Fei came out and joined them .22’s in hand. None of us knew Fei and Chris knew anything about guns, let alone how to load and fire them. Maybe their parents were shooters and taught them, or maybe when the world came falling around our ears they picked it up watching people load and fire them.

The kids were really shaken up so the girls took them back inside to deal with them. Chris, Ju and I unloaded the rig to free up space on the trailer. Once the trailer was cleared, Chris manned the backhoe while Ju and I loaded bodies into the bucket. Chris drove about forty yards outside the wall and piled the bodies up. Once all the bodies were, removed Chris dug a large hole and drug all the bodies into it and covered them up. The ground was still soaked with blood and guts and we were going to have to get as much of that cleaned up tomorrow as we could. The last thing we needed was to catch some sort of disease or infection from decomposing guts and gore.

Despite some of the problems we ran into today, I think it was a fruitful day. The kids seem to be doing better tonight. They are going to have to deal with it; killing zombies is the new reality of life. First thing tomorrow, we will finish with the gore clean up and get on the gates. Alex having to lean a ladder on the wall to shoot is another reason we need to build towers or stands so she and Sam can shoot over the wall. Chris said once we are done with clean up he will begin digging the trench while Ju and I build the gates. I will let you know later how it goes.

[streetpig1690]

October 6, 2010

I know when one writes a journal he is supposed to write daily and if you are reading this you want to know the day to day of my life. Well you’re going to have to suck it. We are after all in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Sorry for being a bit rude, it has just been a long busy week and I am tired.

Let me back up a bit and once again get you caught up. The day after the hoard attack on the lodge was just the beginning of a busy week. Sam and Alex said that they would clean up the gore so Ju and I could get started on the gates. Chris had skipped breakfast to top off the fluid levels and diesel in the Cat so he could get started right away on the trench.

The gates were not going to be anything fancy. Neither Ju nor I had the technical skill or the parts and equipment to come up with something intricate. What we did was to build a large single well-supported frame for each entry. Then we bolted and welded sheets of quarter inch iron plate over them. We had to place eight of the large iron hinges in place to support the gate.

To help keep the gate from being shoved inward by a vehicle or large numbers of zombies Ju and I dug four three-foot deep holes. Each hole was sleeved with an eight inch in diameter three-foot long iron pipe. Once the gate was closed and the three iron cross braces were put in place we would drop four seven foot long seven inch diameter iron poles into the holes. While this isn’t the greatest and strongest gate, it is the best we could do. I am not sure how it will fare against something like an eighteen-wheeler, but I am sure it will hold off any number of zombies.

By the end of the day, we had the gates completed. Chris had the trench dug along the front portion of the wall and the dirt piled up in front of it. We were going to have to use shovels to even it out and flatten it when we got a chance. We could possibly head back to the garden center and get one of those plastic drums you fill with water to roll over rough ground and flatten it.

Alex and Sam spent the day with their gruesome task wearing rubber gloves and walking around with plastic bags picking up all the nastiness. Another thing they did was locate a couple of insecticide sprayers. They poured in bleach mixed with water and sprayed everywhere in the front where zombies had been slain. They also insisted that before entering the lodge everyone had to take their boots off, have the soles sprayed with the bleach water mixture, and leave them on the front porch until we had some rain to help wash away everything.

After finishing getting the gates up it was about four pm and Ju told me he was going to take Chris on his first run. He said it would be a simple one. He felt that despite Chris still being in a weakened condition his confidence had taken a hell of a boost defending the lodge. He felt that this simple run could put him over the top and help him recover mentally from his captivity.

The two left almost immediately and headed for the garden center. The rest of us took a little down time to be normal and played a quick card game waiting for Ju and Chris to return. The game seemed to help the kids a little by just getting to do something normal besides enduring the hardship of being slaves, and fighting for their lives. Even Alex seemed to perk up after winning a couple of hands. Because of her former job, I don’t think that picking up guts and gore for the day bothered her much. Sam, well Sam was being Sam, tough as nails.

Chris and Ju returned in time for supper. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood. The gates were closed, the wall surrounding the lodge was complete, and maybe everyone would sleep well tonight.

Chris I thought wouldn’t sleep well at all. He came back with his face flush full of confidence, as if he had won a great victory. He and Ju had gotten two of the rollers. Ju said he let Chris handle three zombies, two with his Glock and one with a crowbar. He said the one he killed with the crowbar is what sent him over the top. Even in his weakened state being able to slay the thing with a melee weapon was an ego booster.

With Chris’s confidence soaring Ju said they checked a small office building just down the road. It only had a lobby, three offices, and two bathrooms. It was locked up tight and they saw no movement inside. The office turned out to have a zombie inside but Chris surprised Ju by stepping past him and delivering a killing blow with the crowbar. They brought back two large plastic containers filled with paper, pens and other office supplies. Out of a storage closet they got an assortment of cleaning supplies. The big find, at least for the girls was another large tub filled with boxes of tampons, and pads. You would have thought the guys brought home furs and jewels. Not the greatest haul in the world but I agree with Ju, the confidence Chris gained was worth it.

After the meal and quick showers for everyone the women and children went to one of the side rooms to start going through the clothing that had been retrieved to see what fit and what didn’t. Ju, Chris and I went up stairs into the Armory to clean and organize weapons. We also discussed another run. This one would be to get beds, dressers and other things for everyone’s rooms.

The children were sleeping on couches in the room by the lounge. Chris and Alex had the last two rooms on the left hand side of the lodge. Ju was sleeping in the center room on the right between the kitchen and infirmary. Sam and I were upstairs together in the tiny apartment. Realistically, because of the size of these rooms, we could all sleep in one room if everyone had twin size beds.

Because of my dreams I wanted to put at least six to eight bunk beds in their room to house more children. We also decided that each of the other rooms would get two full or queen size beds so that the rooms could feasibly house two adult couples. If we rounded up any more adult survivors we could construct a wall to split the room so that each person or pair would have some privacy.

We decided to leave the lounge as the lounge. Even though the big lobby had large comfortable leather couches, chairs and a fireplace it was very open and spacious. We felt that sometimes folks may want to relax in a smaller more comfortable environment, and it would be a little more “cozy” to hold conversations in. Having a conversation in the lodge could become a very noisy affair sometimes even if everyone was spread out. The high vaulted ceiling and flagstone floors seemed to amplify noise.

The next day Chris spent digging the trenches. Sam and Alex took turns on watch. Ju and I spent half of the day finally getting the garage door for Buff’s barn installed. We had to go over to the second batch of cabins and we stripped out all the sheet rock from the non-load bearing walls and took all the two by fours. I helped Ju strip out two six foot by three-foot cabinets from the kitchen. He wanted to use them as a make shift closet in his room.

After we had lunch Ju, Rommel and I hooked up the trailer to the F350 and grabbed some extra fuel cans and the pump in hopes of not only getting furniture but some more diesel. We were using too much as it was without replacing it. Ju was going to use the eighteen-wheeler he had used to crash through the horde as a parts rig for the other one since the first was beat to hell. We had already siphoned all the fuel out and topped off the tanks of the F350 and Buff. The second rig had about half a tank and should be good to go for some time since we didn’t plan to use it until Ju could transform it into the creation he envisioned.

Along the way to the furniture store we managed to locate four diesel vehicles and siphon the fuel from them. Each stop went without incident except at the last truck. We wound up having to kill eleven zombies. I am sure it was the pump that attracted them. The first few were easy kills with melee weapons. The rest we had to put down with our rifles since they came at us in a group of eight. Not a bad exchange rate if you ask me, twelve rounds of 7.62x39, and eight dead zombies, for about thirty-two gallons of diesel. I won’t tell who missed their shots…but it wasn’t me, and I know Rommel wasn’t packing any heat.
We rolled up to the furniture store thirty minutes later. We eradicated several zombies out in the parking lot who happened to be doing a little window-shopping. I killed the first three using Rommel to trip them up and knock them down. Ju giggled like a little kid and said he needed a dog, he thought it was a cool way to kill zombies.

We circled the building and killed a couple of more zombies out by the loading dock under an awning with ashtrays for smokers. I bet they were smokers at one time and they were just hanging out reminiscing about the old days getting ready to light one up when we came along. The doctors were right; smoking can kill you, twice, LOL.

The store was locked up tight and we couldn’t see any movement through the dirty glass windows. According to the sign there was a big liquidation sale going on, I just had to wonder where everyone was at. We used a crowbar to pop the front door open and began our search. Rommel seemed at ease so I wasn’t particularly worried, but I remained diligent throughout the search.

Before loading up furniture we hit the bathrooms for paper products. The girls would be happy since the tampon dispenser was three quarters full and we snagged them all. In the office area we again grabbed all the basic office supplies. I know you are wondering why we keep grabbing office supplies. Well like everything else, they aren’t making it anymore and we don’t plan to make to do lists, drawing out building plans etc. on clay tablets. The manager’s office had a one of the new top of the line high-speed laptops and Ju snagged it with a grin on his face.

Once we began to load furniture I had Rommel stay out front to stand guard. Loading went fairly fast since we grabbed a large flatbed cart to haul everything out to the trailer. Though the lodge had plenty of high quality couches and chairs Ju still insisted on getting two big leather recliners. They were the kind that could seat two comfortably. Ju said he always wanted one and when he told Chris what he was going to get he demanded one too. I rather wanted to have one too but the damn thing would have taken up most of the tiny living room in the apartment. Plus there was no room for it. The two recliners we loaded took up the entire bed of the truck.

We wound up getting three bunk beds, and five queen size beds. To say the trailer was a loaded to the gills would be an understatement. The bedding was stacked high and we wound up using all of our tie down straps to make sure everything was secure. I almost forgot to add they had one hell of a selection of high quality sheets and comforters and we crammed those in the back of the cab.

The store also had washers and dryers, even a couple industrial models you would find in a laundry mat. We would have to come back for those. Once the women found out we left washers and driers and got recliners instead they were probably going to be pissed off. I personally liked my new clothes washing technique. When I went to shower I would just empty my pockets, take off my shoes and step into the shower. I then would squirt some soap or shampoo on the clothes and use a scrub brush to scrub them down while standing under the water. Take them off and get the backsides, then bathe myself. Pretty efficient if you ask me. Sam thinks it is, in her words, the dumbest damn way to wash clothes she has ever seen. I’ll tell you one thing, women just aren’t as creative as everyone thinks, always doing things the hard way.

The trip home was uneventful. We found out that removing the barricade posts and opening the gate was a little time consuming. If someone was being chased by raiders they might just wind up being smoked. I reckon that is the price of security.

The run didn’t take that long and we immediately unloaded everything. Chris was happier than a pig in shit about the recliner. However, the women looked like they had stepped in pig shit when they found out we left the washers and driers behind to bring home recliners. From the look on Sam’s face I knew daddy wasn’t going to get any loving that night.

The most frustrating thing of the day was putting the bunk beds together. The women relegated us to that task while they took the easy job of putting the bed frames together and stacking the box springs, and mattresses on them.

Who in the fuck came up with the assembly process and direction for these fucking things? I figured Ju would make it a breeze since the damn things were assembled in China. He just laughed and said the reason it was all fucked up was that the communist Chinese did it, not the capitalist Chinese of Taiwan. He went on to praise the magnificence and brilliance of Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities, and said if his people had made the beds they would have assembled themselves. Some people are such smart asses.

The next day was pretty much like the last except Ju and I didn’t have to build anything and headed out for a local hardware store to get waterproofing for the garage, and flexible drainage pipes to run alongside it. Chris really wanted to go but knew he had to keep on digging the trench. He was along the back wall now and hopefully in two more days would have it completed.

The hardware store was devoid of any zombies. We took every five-gallon can of waterproofing the place had. We also got twelve five-gallon jugs of termite control concentrate. We scrounged up the last bit of yard tools in the place. I found about twenty large cartons of nails and screws of various sizes in the back.

We also took every tarp the place had in stock. We were going to use a few of them to nail to the side of the garage after putting the waterproofing on. This would help to act as a barrier against moisture coming from the dirt placed up around the sides. We also took three small wood burning stoves. We didn’t need them right now but you never know when you might. We took several different sizes of PVC piping. Before leaving the store we took quite a few other miscellaneous items to round out the haul.

We still had plenty of day light left so we headed back to the furniture store to get a washer and dryer. The parking lot was empty of any undead and the interior of the store was as well. We grabbed a dolly from the back and had to manhandle the industrial washer and dryer we picked out onto the trailer. By the time we finished loading them onto the trailer we had started to draw a crowd.

We were ready to leave and didn’t want to fuck around so we decided to shoot the silly bastards. I won’t say who again, but someone missed a few shots. Fourteen zombies taken out with twenty-two rounds. I know I fired eight rounds and got eight kills.

Maybe someone should switch weapons and not carry an AK pistol. I am not knocking a man’s weapon choice, but I’m just putting it out there. Of course daddy did say a certain type of folk were very hard headed. He also said they were smart little fuckers too. Maybe if this certain someone of Asian heritage would get a rifle with a stock he might hit more zombies. Of course I really doubt it, because I ragged the shit out of that certain someone all the way home about what a shitty zombie-killing weapon they had while he kept saying it was the best thing going.

When we got back to the lodge and unloaded everything the girls were thrilled with the washer and dryer. Sam seemed really pleased. It looks like daddy just might get that loving he missed out on last night, LOL.

After everything was unloaded and stacked up Ju and I applied the waterproofing and termite chemicals to the garage and nailed the tarps in place. Chris started dumping the dirt immediately after we were finished. The defenses were finally taking shape!

The last three days we have spent building towers. We have managed to build five. One on each corner and one at the first gate overlooking the boxed in area. We to build three more, one for the center of each wall.

I know you are just dying with curiosity to know how we constructed the towers and what they look like. For all you engineering geniuses out there you must remember we had to build these things with what we had on hand. You just can’t run down to the local construction supply store and order up what you need.

Well I will tell you what they look like and how we constructed them. They stand ten feet high at the floor of the platform and are ten feet square. They have a lean-to type roof covering the upper platform. The exposed portion of the upper platform is surrounded in metal sheets four feet high. We constructed the frame much like I constructed Buff’s armor. The wall frames actually consist of two frames per side constructed eighteen feet tall and are wide enough to drop the railroad ties into and they hold them place by having a frame on each side. We then drilled several holes in each side of the bottom portion of the frames and drove rods down into the ground to hold them in place.

So the lower half’s walls are railroad ties, and the upper half’s walls are metal plates. Like Buff’s armor two metal plates sandwich the gravel in between. The only difference is that the towers metal and gravel filled armor walls are the same width as the railroad ties. After doing ballistic tests on the upper exposed portion of the towers that they will deflect and protect against everything up to a .308 round.

Chris came up with the idea to dump dirt around the of the sides of the tower, leaving an opening for the door of course, much like we did with the garage. Not only to support the tower itself, but to insulate the room below. The floors right now just have about four inches of gravel on them. He thinks that one day we may come across quickcrete or be able to make concrete and be able to use the rooms for some storage or possible living quarters if the population of the loge grows.

That seemed like a pretty damn good idea to everyone. The sides were treated with waterproofing and the termite spray, tarps put up and the dirt piled up around the sides. We had to build retaining walls though to keep the dirt from piling up in front of the doors.

That pretty much sums up this week. We still have a lot to do and a lot of things to get. We are running low on metal so we need to find another source for metal sheets, and angle iron. Our welding supplies are running low. We have used the crap out of the generator and need more gasoline. We are good right now on food but want more before winter gets here. Also Alex has experience raising chickens, so those would be nice for the added protein. Ammo, we have tons of it, but want more, especially the way someone has been shooting lately . Diesel fuel is another item we need since all of our vehicles run off of it. Propane tanks are another must have item. We have enough according to our estimates to last until next fall at our current consumption but that doesn’t mean we won’t get more people increasing the usage.

I would like to find some razor wire. Despite the wall being surrounded by the trench it would be nice to ring the wall with it in case someone figured out away to get across the eight foot gap or up the eleven feet from the bottom of the trench. I got a lot of groans about this next item but I think it has to be done. We screwed up on the construction of the wall.

Despite the grass seed being spread to help fight erosion I think we need to build a retaining wall along the berm and trench. To speed things along I want to cut down every telephone pole we can find and use them. They average thirty to forty feet in length and a foot in diameter. They will cover more length than the logs I had cut, thus requiring us to use fewer. That is something like twenty-five per side if we build it five feet high.

I think we can do it in a week or less if we take the eighteen-wheeler and its flatbed trailer plus the backhoe to lift the poles. I might be being a bit optimistic but I think we can do it in that time frame. Well that is it for now. Good night.

[kaijafon]

a story filled with awesomeness!!! Maybe they will find some concrete at that hardware store
thanks and I am ready for MOAR!