Zombie Short Story - The Road Trip - Part 6

[Welcome to my short story serial, "The Road Trip."  In this final installment, things are looking pretty grim for our good folks.  But, if you're new to the series, you'll want to start at the beginning - Part 1.]

     Jeb and the store clerk, Darlene, backed into the El Dorado General Store and slammed the front door behind them.  Jeb's wife, Myra, met them inside with her lever action .30-30 carbine in hand.
     "There's whole mess of them coming," Jeb announced.
     As Darlene locked the front door, the dead launched themselves against the store.  She recoiled as the horde scratched against the metal mesh grid of the door and the burglar bars of the windows.  With each onslaught, the bells hanging from the inner door handle jingled with every onslaught and the moans and clawing of the dead made everyone uneasy.
     "This is an old building folks," Darlene announced in a raspy voice that showed the influence of a lifetime of smoking.  "I hope it will hold up to this."
     "Can we fortify it?" Jeb asked thinking aloud.
     "We can move the ice cream cooler in front of the door," Darlene suggested.
     "O.K.," Myra agreed.  "Good idea."
     Jeb pushed mightily on the cooler and it barely budged.  But, when Myra and Darlene added their muscle, the big cooler slowly moved into place blocking the front door.
     "That there was some girl power," Jeb observed.

     Darlene flexed her bicep victoriously and Myra suggested that Jeb start working out.  Jeb just nodded and reloaded his revolver painstakingly ejecting each spent shell until it was empty and then replacing each shell with another cartridge.
     The moment of levity passed quickly as the first piece of wooden siding on the front of the old store ripped from the building and fell with a clatter.  Additional boards followed in rapid succession.  Then a dead man's arm reached through the wall and started to wave around.  Jeb calmly walked over, grabbed the arm, looked through the small hole in the wall, and gazed into the dark bloodshot eyes of a zombie on the outside. 


      "You stay right there fella," he admonished the dead man.
      Then he cocked the hammer and squeezed the trigger to shoot that dead man right between the eyes.  It was a simple act, but inside the store, the roar of the big magnum was deafening.  Everyone jumped and every conversation was conducted at a yell.
       "Does this place have a back door?" Myra asked.
       "Yes ma'am," Darlene answered.  "And, my Dodge is parked out back!"
        More of the dead were clawing through the front walls of the store and Jeb shot two more.
       "Ladies," he announced as he replaced the spent cartridges.  "It's time for us to leave!"
       Myra grabbed her little cooler of ammunition and sandwiches and the trio made it through the junk food packed aisles of the store and back into the windowless store room.  They reached the  back door just as the dead started to break through the front walls and pour into the front of the establishment.  Flustered, Darlene was trying to find the key to unlock the back door alarm.  But, there were a lot of keys on her key ring.
       "You get the car unlocked Darlene, you take the ones on the right Myra, and I'll take the ones on the left," Jeb yelled.
        When zombies started to squeeze into storeroom, Darlene finally stopped fussing with the store keys and just pushed open the door.  After the gunshots, the siren blast of the exit alarm didn't even phase them.  The group just bounded out and dashed for a ten-year-old Dodge Journey SUV behind the store.  As they moved, Jeb and Myra fired at the nearest zombies.  They each felled one.  As they were older folks trying to run and Myra was still carrying a small lunch cooler, the rest of their shots had little effect.
     Jeb jumped into the front passenger seat, Myra dove in back, and Darlene ran around the front of her boxy SUV.  A zombie reached for her as she climbed into the driver's seat.  Darlene slammed the door on his bloody hand three times before getting it closed.  She started the Dodge and the engine roared to life with her panicked foot on the accelerator.

2010 Dodge Journey - photo by SsmIntrigue / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

        Seconds later they were bouncing down the dirt road that led from the back of the store up to the Omega Road.  The monstrous horde dutifully started to trail behind them.  Jeb said take a right, let's get my truck, and then we'll head to our place.  With the dead strung out across the fields, dirt road, and underbrush behind the store, Darlene just floored it, whipped up onto the Omega Road, and around the block to the ruined store front.  Jeb jumped out and ran for his classic Chevy.  A dead man in a farmer's overalls rounded the building and shuffled for Jeb at a surprising fast place.  Jeb pulled the hammer back, aimed for the head shot and squeezed the trigger.  Click.  Empty.  Jeb's heart sank as he realized he had already fired six shots in the previous mayhem.  
    A race for the truck ensued.  Fortunately a living retired farmer was just a bit faster than a dead farmer.  Jeb scrambled into truck and got it started just as the dead man grabbed his door.  Jeb popped the clutch with plenty of panic-stricken revs, and squeeled out of the parking lot with his back tires spun kicking up sand and gravel in the parking lot.  The zombie held on but lost his grip as Jeb spun the truck around to head south.  The dead farmer rolled across the pavement of the two lane highway and came to rest against a chain-link fence.  With Myra and Darlene in the lead, the survivors raced back down 41 in both vehicles.  
     Jeb and Myra's trip home was much faster than any of them had thought possible.  As soon as they got inside their home, the couple ever so faintly heard their phone ringing inside.  Jeb dashed in and picked up the receiver.  
       "Hello," he yelled.  "Hello!"
       It was Jeb and Myra's daughter Betty.
       "Daddy," Betty said frantically.  "We're trapped up here just outside of Atlanta!"

[Thanks for reading! If you're interested in reading more of my stories or my novel Zombie Complex, I invite you to visit my Amazon Author page here on Amazon.]

Photo credit:  Ruger Super Blackhawk photo adapted from photo by Everett Walker / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) 

Zombie Short Story - The Road Trip - Part 5

[Welcome to my short story serial, "The Road Trip."  In this installment, there's fixing to be a brouhaha in a place called El Dorado.  But, if you're new to the series, you'll want to start at the beginning - Part 1.]

     Standing in the doorway of the El Dorado General Store, Jeb looked in the eyes of the zombie he called Flapjack. The dead man looked right back, moaned, and started shuffling towards the big farmer and the store.  In response, Jeb drew his big single-action revolver with his right hand in one smooth fluid motion.  As he brought it to bear, he cocked the hammer back with his thumb.  He turned slightly, brought his left hand up for extra support on the wooden grips of the big iron, formed a perfect isosceles triangle with his stance, caught a brief glimpse of the front sight, and squeezed the trigger.  The whole world exploded with the blast of  the .357 Magnum.  So did Flapjack's head.

Ruger Black Hawk photo by Mika Järvinen from Finland / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

     Ordinarily Myra wasn't the kind of woman who could be told what to do or where to be.  She was planning to dash by Jeb and get her rifle from the truck.  But, when that big magnum went off, she appeared to levitate about four inches of the ground, did a pirouette worthy of the Atlanta ballet, and ran right back into the store.
     It was a good thing because Jeb had to turn back to his right and deal with dead homeless lady.  If you think life comes at you fast, Jeb would tell you that death can come at you pretty damn quick.  The homeless lady had about four feet to go when the big Black Hawk spoke its gospel once again.  Jeb hoped she'd find a home with Jesus.
     Next a zombie clambered up on the hood of truck, Jeb wasn't having that so he got a quick shot off that hit the zombie in the chest and sent him tumbling backwards to the other side of the vehicle.  Zombies came around the front and back of the truck and from around the two gas pump island further out in the parking lot.  Six gun math was starting to look grim for Jeb as a dozen zombies were converging on the store.
     He was surprised to see Myra dart past him and jumped into the front of the truck.  As he dispatched the closest zombies on his left and right, she ran back into the store with her rifle and the lunch cooler.  As Jeb backed towards the store, he was surprised by a couple of shotgun blasts nearly right over his shoulder.  The store clerk, Darlene, was standing in the doorway with a double-barreled coach gun.
     "You don't expect me to sit out here in the middle of nowhere alone do you?" she asked the temporarily deafened old farmer.  
      Together they retreated back into the store as the dead gathered for a bigger fight.

Coach Gun - Short double-barreled Shotgun - photo by Marcus Burns / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

[Thanks for reading.  For the exciting conclusion of our story, read Part 6!]
    

Zombie Short Story: The Road Trip - Part 4

[Welcome to my short story serial, "The Road Trip."  In this installment, Jeb and Myra think they may be able to trade some vegetables for merchandise.  But, they meet some customers who might have other ideas.  Of course, if you're new to the series, you might want to start at the beginning - Part 1.]

     Leaving the dead man dead in the road behind them, Jeb and Myra continued north on highway 41.  The cab of the old truck was silent and somber save for the clicking of Chevy's six-cylinder engine and the rustling of the wind in the windows.  After a few minutes, the couple began to see more houses, mobile homes,  small industrial buildings, a church, and a general store.  According to legend, El Dorado, is some kind of lost city of gold down in South America.  But, in the southern part of America, it's just an unincorporated rural community in Georgia.  If there was gold in our El Dorado, it's been gone for a long time.  For most visitors, it's a place for desperate folks to get off the highway, use the restroom,  gas up, and grab some sort of snack.

     Jeb also knew El Dorado was a place plenty of hard working folks called home.  He saw the aging El Dorado General Store on his left and pulled across the road into their sand and gravel parking lot.
     
     "Lotto, Food, Beer, and Wine," Jeb announced.  "I wonder if they'll want to trade for some fresh vegetables."
     "I wonder if they'll shoot you dead for walking into a convenience store with a gun?"  Myra replied smartly.
     "I think I'll be alright," Jeb said.  "They know me here."
     "I don't see any of those monsters so I better leave the rifle here in the truck."
     "Well, let's go in and see how they're doing."
     As Jeb opened the heavy steel and glass door, a string of jingle bells did their thing to announce his presence.  Jeb just poked his head in, and looked around.
      "How y'all doing?" he asked in a rather booming voice.
      A skinny older lady with salt and pepper hair and a million wrinkles peeked from around the register.  A long southern conversation ensued.  Her name was Darlene and it turned out that she once went to the same church as Jeb and Myra.  While they talked about zombies, they also covered every other possible topic.  It turned out that Darlene had a son in rehab for drug addiction.  Jeb and Myra would pray for his recovery.  Another of her sons was selling tractors down in Valdosta.  Her daughter was away at Agriculture school, but decided to join the Army and is over in Germany.  Her grandchildren were supposed to come for a few weeks in the summer.  Myra hoped they could come to vacation bible school.  They must have talked on and on for an hour.
     In ordinary circumstances, such a conversation would drive big city folks crazy.  But, in these times of crisis, the conversation merely provided time for lots and lots of big city zombies to walk right into the tiny Georgia settlement known as El Dorado.  In fact, when Jeb walked out to get the bushel of butter beans that he sold after all that conversation, he found he had plenty of company in the parking lot.  The state fair portalet and death smell alone would knocked most men over.
     To his left and about thirty feet away was the ghostly pale shell of a used car salesman from Warner-Robins.  Well groomed and athletic in life, his appearance in death was marred by deep cut across his face that exposed his skeletal jaw and left his cheek flapping across his car dealer polo shirt.  To his right, a very dead homeless woman in an overcoat was wandering around the periphery of the gas station lot.  Jeb could see the silhouettes of at least a dozen other zombies partially obscured by this truck.
      As Myra edged out the door behind him, Jeb motioned her back and said, "You better go inside."
      He unsnapped the holster top strap that secured his Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum.  It was an old school single-action revolver.  Whatever was going to happen next was going to happen just the way John Wayne would have done it.  Jeb decided Flapjack would be target number one.

[Thanks for reading!  Read on to see if Jeb can flip a flapjack!  Check out The Road Trip - Part 5]

Zombie Short Story: The Road Trip - Part 3

[Welcome to my short story serial, "The Road Trip."  In this installment, Jeb is in quite a pickle.  But, if you're new to the series, you might want to start at the beginning - Part 1.]

     "Oh Lord," Jeb prayed aloud.  "Let me start this truck!"
     The old farmer pumped the gas twice, pulled the oversized steering-column-mounted shift lever back and up into first gear, depressed the clutch, and turned the key.  As the old straight-six turned over, he heard the dead man's hand slap the side of the truck.  As the engine roared to life, a gnarled claw-like hand reached in through the open window. 

1953 Chevy 3100 Pickup Truck

     This time Jeb had the presence of mind to ease the clutch up nice and slow while pressing on the gas.  The '53 Chevy truck accelerated away leaving the the zombie behind.
     "That was close," Jeb turned and said to wife.  "Myra!?"
     Myra's side of the bench was empty and the door was slightly ajar.  He was shocked.  Then he looked in the rear-view mirror in time to see his wife of forty years confronting the dead man eyeball-to-eyeball.
     As for Myra, from a distance of about fifteen feet she looked directly into the eyes of the dead man and the dead man looked right back at her for a moment.  It seemed like an eternity.  Myra wondered if she saw any hint of humanity in the dead man.  But, the dead man just moaned and took a step towards her.  It was his last step.
     Myra had her .30-30 carbine at the ready, brought it to her shoulder, focused only for a moment on the front sight, and squeezed the trigger.  In a bloody instant the dead man dropped to the ground.  Myra turned away from the ghastly sight and backed off the road.  When she looked up, the old Chevy 3100 was between her and the body.
     "Honey, are you okay?" Jeb asked.
      Myra was shaking and pale.  Jeb's voice was muffled to her as adrenaline raced through her body.
      "Myra baby," he asked again. "Are you going to be okay?"
      Jeb sat for a moment and said, "I was wondering where you went?"
     Myra took a deep breath, opened the door, and unsteadily guided the Marlin back into the gun rack.  Grabbing Jeb's outstretched hand, she climbed back into the truck.


     "I wasn't sure you'd get it into gear," Myra said. "I figured I better keep him from hitching a ride."
     "That three-on-a-tree manual is gonna be the death of me!"
     "The death of me too!"
     "Do you think we should stop and bury him?" Myra asked as they started back down the road.
     "No.  It's too dangerous," Jeb replied.  "There might be more like him out there."
     "Then let's say a prayer for that poor man's soul."
     Jeb pulled the truck over into the median and the couple bowed their heads. Jeb said a few somber words that were barely audible over the engine.  When their prayer was over, they got back on the two lane road that was Highway 41.
     "I think we'll definitely be making a pit stop in El Dorado," he said.
     "Yes," Myra replied. "I think we're both going to have to tinkle."
   
[Thanks for reading this zombie story.  You can continue on to read the next installment here:  The Road Trip (Part 4)]

Zombie Short Story: The Road Trip - Part 2

[This is the second part of my serialized series of short stories.  To start at the beginning of this series, read "The Road Trip-Part 1."]

    With a full load of vegetables and canned preserves, Jeb and Myra pulled out of their drive and started their journey to the north in their old Chevy pickup truck. 

   "How should we go?" Jeb asked.

   "If we take the highway," Myra replied.  "We'll get their faster."

   "If we take 41," Jeb said.  "We'll have more options if something happens and we can stop in some of the little general stores on the way up."
   "Then 41 is definitely the way to go."
   Driving gently, Jeb piloted the '53 Chevy across the nearby interstate overpass and hung a left to head north on Highway 41.  In this part of Georgia, it was merely a well-maintained and striped two-lane road.  Soon the truck was clicking along at a steady fifty miles per hour through rural Georgia on its trek to market.  Farm fields, an occasional house, and small stands of pines broke the monotony. It wouldn't be a long trip and it was a familiar route, but Myra sat mesmerized looking at the arrow straight road and the endless ribbon of railroad tracks to their right.

US Highway 41 in South Georgia (courtesy of Google Maps)

After a few minutes, Jeb started squinting and looking far down the blacktop.  A little ways ahead, a bearded man in an open blue denim shirt and jeans stood in the middle of the road.
    "Is that...what is that guy doing in the road?" he asked as he started to slow the truck.
    "I don't know," Myra replied.  "Do you think he needs help?"
    "I reckon we'll see what he wants," said as he pushed in the clutch and brought the truck to a stop alongside the man who stood alone in the opposite traffic lane.
     "Hey fella," Jeb hollered in a friendly but booming voice. "Do ya need any help?"
     The man turned revealing a two gaping chest wounds and a bloodly torn up ear.  A streak of dried reddish-brown blood soaked his denim work shirt, the tee shirt he wore underneath, and his pants all the way to the ground.  Jeb recoiled and practically jumped to the middle of the bench seat.  Even the old truck jumped as the Jeb inadvertently popped the clutch.  In its top gear, third, the old truck lurched ahead about 30-feet and completely stalled.
     As Jeb regained his seat, he could hear the dead man moan and see him growing larger in the rear view mirror.  His revolver was pinned awkwardly to his hip by the lap belt his kids had lovingly had installed.  His only choice was to start the truck.

<It looks like Jeb better get it gear or he's gonna be drooling and shuffling.  Read on in the next installment - Part 3!>