Journals of the Damned (Book 1) Page 14

  I told Allan to maintain a watch during the day and I would take watch at night. Once an hour he goes outside, armed, and checks the perimeter with the binoculars to ensure nobody is spying on us. I don't expect Allan to find anybody during the day, it's the night when I expect they'll come. If our watcher would come during the day, openly, I would expect them to have better intentions. If my suspicions are true and they come at night, I'll know that their intentions are hostile towards us. The fact that whomever it is hasn't already tried to make contact doesn't bode well to begin with. Of course I could be imagining this, with all that's happened and the extreme amount of stress I've been under I could be over reacting.

  Friday, March 1, 2013

  For two days we've been keeping watch and there was nothing. Allan seems more interested in playing with the X-Box than anything else lately, I can tell he doesn't think anybody has been watching us. I told him we needed to keep this up for a couple of weeks at least, just to make sure.

  Last night, around three in the morning, we had a visitor. The boredom and the hour was getting to me, making me tired and lax. I almost missed her.

  The resolution isn't the best, looking through the night vision goggles is kind of murky but I swear to the Gods that the woman who came out of the woods to check out the house was naked. She wasn't completely naked, she wore a shoulder holstered sidearm on each side and a gun belt. I couldn't really see if she was one of the "Reds" or not but she must have been. No one besides one of the insane would walk around buck naked in the middle of the night in March.

  I was never able to get a shot off at her, she was quick and the metal slats impeded my view.

  All I really saw of her was when she crept along the east side of the house where I was. My view, looking down, is horrible and I'm lucky I spotted her at all. She must have came from the north or south side, my blind sides, as I move back and forth between looking through the east and west vents. How long she had been on the property I could only guess, but now I knew without a doubt that we were being monitored and probably hunted.

  This morning, as soon as it was light out I went and did a check of the exterior of the house. The softer ground under one of the attached garage's small windows held the slightest impressions of footprints. Footprints, not shoeprints. It took me a second to notice that all the screws, except for two, holding the thick wood over the window had been removed. The two remaining screws were loose, ready to be removed easily so she could get in whenever she had wanted. She had to have been there for some time, the screws were set very tightly. I heard no whine of a battery operated drill, nor did I see her carrying one, so she must have used a simple screw driver to remove them. I was pissed at myself for not spotting her doing that. At least I did end up seeing her, and I did catch what she had done before it was too late. If I hadn't seen her last night I doubt either Allan or I would have checked the boarded up windows for missing screws. We gave the house a good going over and searched the area for anything else amiss but found nothing. Allan wanted to fix the board back up but I told him not to. I wanted to catch the bitch in the act when she came back. I didn't want her to know we were on to her.

  Tonight I'm setting up watch in the garage. She'll be back, I'm sure of it.

  Sunday, March 3, 2013

  I waited in the garage for her return. The two car garage had both the Suburban we had brought with us and an older Cadillac, along with some assorted stuff the previous owner had stored here. I thought about taking the vehicles out and possibly stashing them next door or somewhere out of sight but decided against it. The reason I kept them in the garage was that I didn't know how much inspecting the parasite maddened woman had already done and I didn't want her to suspect that I was on to her plan. The bitch could easily have already scanned the interior of the garage, we had no idea how long or how many times she had actually been here. My plan was to kill or capture her once she crawled through the window. I would try to capture her alive and question her, then kill her when I was done. Either way I was going to put the "Red" out of her misery. I don't think she had actually been inside the garage, the screen was still intact and the window itself was shut, locked and alarmed. If she had found a way inside the door to the house itself was also always locked and alarmed.

  I had Allan gather up our stuff, ready to move if we had to, and pack it into the Suburban. We honestly didn't know if she was alone or if there were others with her. This could have gone down any number of ways and I wanted to be prepared. I can't say that I planned for how the events unfolded though.

  I waited throughout the night with my weapons and my night vision goggles, crouched between the vehicles. Again around three in the morning she showed back up.

  Quietly, almost without a sound the plywood came off the window. The loudest sound came when she set the plywood down and it banged slightly against the house. If I hadn't have known she was out there I wouldn't have noticed her.

  For the space of a few minutes there was nothing. I couldn't see her and there was no noise at all. My heart started racing and my adrenalin started flowing when I saw her, cautiously, peer through the glass and inspect the interior of the garage. I ducked down and waited for her next move, I didn't want her to see me and run off. After a moment I poked my head back up and watched as she cut the screen away. After that there came the unmistakable sound of a diamond tipped glass cutting tool scratching a hole in the window. Again, if we hadn't have known she was going to try to break in, we wouldn't have heard the small scraping sound inside the house. Another pause and then a suction cup was carefully placed on the window where the glass would be cut out. A quiet thump on the window, breaking the hole in the glass and it was done. The hole she had cut in the window was no bigger than a fist, I had expected her to cut most of the window out so she could wriggle through. Then I thought she was going to unlock the window and disable the alarm somehow but she didn't. Instead the plastic nozzle of a gas can was inserted through the hole. The can was tipped and gasoline started pouring out, running down the wall and pooling on the floor.

  Her plan was to burn us out of the house in the middle of the night. Probably she would either try to pick us off or capture us as we would be confused and disoriented.

  I shot at her, trying not to hit the gas can or the spilled gas. I had no desire to start the fire by sending hot lead into the highly flammable liquid. I couldn't go for a head shot as her head was behind the can from my point of view. I went for body shots. I shot through the wall of the garage and I knew I at least hit my target once when she screamed in pain and shock.

  The gas can immediately dropped to the ground. I kept firing, wanting to kill the bitch as she ran away screaming filth at us. The crazy bitch started shooting back at us as she ran away, into the woods.

  Allan opened up the back door and started shooting too but it was pitch black outside. All of his shots were going to miss, he couldn't even see his target.

  I ran past him and told him to stay here and keep guard while I tracked her down and finished her.

  The bitch had a head start on me. She also knew the area a whole lot better than me. Even though she was basically naked and wounded she still outpaced me as I chased her. She ran through bushes and nettles without care, ignoring the cuts and scratches she received. I kept firing at her, trying to kill her before she got away but the darkness, trees and distance between myself and my dodging target proved to be too much to fire effectively.

  I followed her, catching momentary glimpses of her fleeing from me, for what seemed like miles. I had followed her to the outskirts of downtown when I lost her. I had to stop following her when I started running into groups of the undead. In fact I turned the corner of a building and almost ran into some of the undead abominations. I was almost positive the bitch had come this way. I had to shoot my way out of there. The undead were coming my way, having been drawn to the sounds of gunfire. Maybe she had dodged through a building, she must have planned for this, she lost me.

>   I was positive I had at least put one round into her. Hopefully It'll kill the bitch or at least force her into hiding for awhile.

  I went back to the house and a nervous Allan as quickly as I could.

  We made preparations and plans for the next day when it would be light out again.

  There was no way we could leave a wounded and extremely dangerous opponent like her alive. Allan wanted to flee, find someplace safer. I was pissed and reminded him that there was no safe place anymore. No matter where we went there would be the infected who had been driven insane and the undead ghouls. I might have been too harsh with him. I could tell he was scared and upset too. I felt that we needed to make a stand eventually. We couldn't run away every time something went wrong. Even if we fled who's to say the crazy bitch wouldn't follow us. I'm sure that the bitch wanted to murder us just as badly as we wanted to kill her.

  If the crazed bitch was using the hundreds of undead as a shield to hide behind, then I was going to have to take that shield away. I wouldn't have to kill all of the zeds, all I really had to do was to lead them away from the downtown area where she was hiding.

  We kept a tense watch until dawn, watching to make sure she didn't come back. We loaded up the Suburban with all the weapons and ammo we had collected. We even went so far as to remove the rear bench seat and knocked out all the rear windows for better firing. I made up some Molotov cocktails with the gas from the Cadillac. If I had to burn the town down to get to the bitch, that's what I would do. It would serve her right, to burn to death, it's what she planned to do to us.

  At first light we headed to town.

  Allan drove as I took up a position in the back. When we got in range of the undead, Allan slowed to a crawl and I fired and killed as many as I could. When they started getting too close I hurled a Molotov at them and Allan drove out of range of them again.

  The undead paid no heed what so ever to the flames of the ignited gasoline. They went right through the blaze, lighting themselves afire, in their single minded pursuit to catch and devour us alive.

  Waves of them came after us. A lot of my shots missed or hit the filthy things in the chest or arms, doing nothing to stop them. Allan slowly drove through the cluttered and potholed streets as I did my best to kill as many as I could. A few times Allan found the way blocked by wreckage or a stray group of the animated dead and had to turn around and drive over lawns and between buildings to keep us out of reach of the hungering monsters.

  Slowly we were leading them out of town. I had put so many of them back into the arms of true death that I had to reload all of my clips. It was while I was reloading that I tossed the majority of my Molotov's and the last of my hand grenades. Allan hit a deep pothole just as I was throwing my last grenade. The grenade was active, and I almost shit myself as I watched it hit the roof of the Suburban and tumble wildly around. I recovered it and chucked it out the side window just before it went off. I don't blame Allan for driving into the pothole, there is garbage and leaves strewn about the roads, covering up most of the holes to begin with. The live grenade bounced once of the asphalt and went off only a moment after I ducked down. Allan had heard my warning shout and had seen what happened wide eyed and mouth agape, he didn't need to be told to duck down. The rear tire blew out as shrapnel tore through it and peppered the Suburban with small holes. Thankfully the only wound I or Allan sustained was a shallow cut from a hot piece of metal that sliced open my jeans and grazed my leg.

  It was past noon before we had finally lead the undead from town. I had to reload more than a few times and we were now on our last clips. I had managed to kill off the vast majority of the undead, hundreds of them lay in the streets, some still burning from the Molotov's I had used. I felt good about the day's work so far, now we would go back into town and hunt the bitch down.

  There were a few isolated zeds in town, most of them were incapable of walking. The stragglers crawled or dragged themselves along, easy targets.

  As we approached the center of downtown the bitch started sniping at us from a rooftop. The first round hit me square in the chest, knocking the wind out of me and hammering me to the floor of the Suburban. The bullet proof vest I was wearing saved my life. Allan drove out of town, the blown tire's rim throwing up sparks as the bitch fired round after round at us. She was a lousy shot, thankfully, only hitting the Suburban once more before we were out of sight.

  It wasn't until we got closer to our safe house that we noticed the thick black smoke. Without a doubt, while we had been leading the zombies out of town, she had been busy too. There was a knot in my stomach as I realized the smoke was billowing from our safe house. Whatever we hadn't taken with us was now burning. We had gathered our traveling packs but we left all of our food behind.

  Allan once again wanted to flee and I told him he was welcome to. I was going to stay and kill the infested cunt. Allan decided not to leave.

  Fine. It was a fight to the death, we already knew that. Now though the bitch made a tactical mistake. If she hadn't of burned down our house we would have surely returned to it and she would know where we were. Now she was going to have to find us again. This time she was going to have a problem. I knew where she was. I saw the flash from the muzzle when she fired at me. Even if the building she fired on us from wasn't where she was living, it had to be close. Now she was without her undead guards.

  Now I am going to tend to my shrapnel wound and get some rest, then we will hunt the bitch down.

  Monday, March 4, 2013

  I was exhausted from the hours long battle with the undead but there was still a lot we had to do before we could sleep.

  There was still plenty of light left, it gave us the opportunity to set up a false hideout. I had already picked out a couple of back up buildings that would serve to hole up in when I had scouted for supplies. None were as good as the one the bitch had burned down, with its safe room. The most logical choice was a little storage facility named, "U Store It". The property was fenced in and the main office had a small apartment above it. It was fairly secure wouldn't be hard to defend but we wouldn't stay there. We did, however, make it look like we were staying there.

  The Suburban, with its mangled, tireless, rear rim and the multiple bullet and shrapnel holes stood out like a sore thumb. It was easily recognizable as belonging to us so we parked it in plain sight, there, in front of the office.

  I figured that the parasite maddened Red would come out again once night fell. Without a doubt she would search her town for any sign of us. Also without a doubt she would burn whatever building she thought we were hiding in. Allan and I talked about whether or not the other burned shells of buildings in the community were because of accidents or her setting them ablaze to force survivors out. Probably the latter.

  The shrapnel wound was deeper than I had thought it was. It also hurt a lot more once my adrenalin stopped flowing. I did my best to stitch it up with a needle and thread from my sewing kit. It looks nothing like what a doctor would do but it closed the wound. It was an exercise in self inflicted pain, I hadn't thought a small needle could hurt so much.

  We cleaned our weapons and took stock of what ammo remained. There isn't much left.

  Our meal consisted of some rice we found in the caretakers apartment. There was nothing else to eat. All of our food was destroyed in the fire, along with our clothes, sleeping bags and everything else we had scrounged in the past months.

  I made sure to turn on one of the apartment lights, ensuring a small amount of illumination will spill into the night. I wanted the insane bitch to think we were inside. We even went so far as to drag two of the zeds we wasted earlier, a male and female corpse, and placed them inside. We got a third corpse and laid it in just inside the entry gate and fired off a single round. The parasite infected woman was sure to hear the shot, clueing her as to our new location. Hopefully she would think we fired off the round because a zombie had gotten too close and we had to kill it. If she burned the building down she would
find two smoldering corpses. If she thought we were dead it would be a lot easier to catch her off guard.

  I also booby-trapped the door with my shotgun. I didn't like the idea of giving the weapon up, but if we were staying in the building we certainly would do something like that. There was always the off chance that she would be foolish enough to pick the lock on the door and try to kill us in our sleep, receiving a face full of lead but I doubt she would do that. If she did fire bomb the place she would come back to find the shotgun aimed at the door, as if we were actually hiding inside. My M1 carbine was out of ammo so I left it in one of the cadaver's arms.

  After setting up the fake shelter we made our way to the charred ruins of the large walled piece of property in the richer and older part of town.