Zombie apocalypse fiction – Ruth’s Story #197 Day Camp Activities Somewhere Near Warm Beach, WA #TEOTWAWKI #SHTF #WROL

So I failed to get this chapter posted yesterday – mea culpa. Still adjusting to a twice a week posting schedule.

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“Shack, two full cases of MREs – really?” I ask.

Handing Honey sitting in the Dodge truck the sealed cardboard boxes which look a little worse for the wear, Shack answers.

“Yeah, uh … Russian sergeant, uh … Duragananotive … or something … ya’ know the one who’s about as wide as she’s tall and sounds like she’s been chewing gravel all day …”

“Dragomirova,” Honey interrupts Shack without looking up from pilfering the two MRE cases given to her and Monster’s care.

Shack briefly looks at Honey, “Yeah, uh … her … uh, … she said that they found an underground storage locker with a large steel door. Others had tried to get in; she said there was evidence of several hammer strikes and attempts with various cutting tools. She had to use explosives to get the door open. For a bunch of religious nut jobs, they had a nice stash of stuff. Anyway, that fireplug-shaped Russian chick …”

“Dragomirova,” Honey helpfully adds again.

“Anyways, uh … yeah her, she said that we are going to scorch earth this place. Know what she means?”

“Shack, she means that we are leaving nothing anyone else could use.”

“Oh,” Shack says, turning to Honey he asks, “Hey, how come you know the name of that beefy Russian sergeant so well?”

Blushing darkly red, Honey drops her eyes to the ground. With her pale KCAP-induced complexion Honey’s red face vividly contrasts with the rest of her skin.

Looking away from Shack and I, Honey mutters, “I don’t … ummm … uh … you know … um … with girls,” while if possible turning even redder.

“Huh?” Shack replies eloquent as ever.

“Shack, dear leave it alone.” Honey gives me a quick glance and a grateful nod but refuses to meet my eyes. I am hoping that Honey does not worry that I am upset about her choice of sexuality.

Without the boys around, it looks as if Honey and I need a sexuality discussion. I am not sure if anyone has ever had a birds and the bees discussion with Honey.

I wonder if I might have a word with sergeant Dragomirova about propositioning a 13-year-old girl. I am hoping that Dragomirova is ignorant of Honey’s true age as she does not look as if she is only 13. If she desires sex with a 13 year old girl, sergeant Dragomirova and I will have a serious problem.

“Ok, anyways, other than a bunch of rusty, useless guns, there was a bunch of ammo, three cases of M33 frag grenades, a case of nearly new M67 frag grenades, and a pile of moldy cardboard MRE cases. Most of the MREs are three to five years out of date, so Doc’s handing them out. You know how the colonels worry about malnutrition becoming a problem.”

Stimulating a ravenous appetite in the infected, the KCAP virus literally drives its host to eat. Doc mentioned that some of the hunger symptoms reminded him of Prader-Willi Syndrome, but without most of the other physical characteristics of someone suffering PWS such as small stature and obesity.

As KCAP infection progresses the virus attacks the host’s frontal lobe, destroying it eventually. Without their frontal lobe the KCAP infected lose rational reasoning.

It is feared that a lack of nutrition increases the KCAP virus’s activity. In those that are merely infected, but not yet a zombie, the fear is that a lack of nutrition pushes the infected over the line becoming a ravenously hungry eating disorder suffering zombie driven by a neurological compulsion.

Without an Eyam phenomenon, so far no one is immune to KCAP. Shack glances at Honey and then Monster before continuing on.

“When I left the Colonel’s tent the explosive dudes were busily taping those M33 grenades with electrician’s tape muttering about “no fucking safety clips and stupid religious freaks.”

Honey asks, “Do you know what they meant by that Shack?”

“Uh, yeah, the old M33 grenades came in fragile wooden cases, packed with straw and sawdust. Down in that buried vault, the humidity and water seeped in reducing the M33 crates to mush. The ordo boys said that had one of the M33s fell just right it would have popped its spoon and gone off. Thankfully, most of the MREs were later additions to the pile as they were on top and mostly out of the small lake in the vault.”

Standing in line in a light drizzle with our two canteen cups we get a healthy slog of oatmeal in one cup. Well, I will say one thing for this religious group; at least they knew how to store food staples. For the truly adventurous there is also UHT white milk. An impervious tomb stone of bannock accompanied by some brown tinged hot liquid vaguely resembling coffee finishes my wonderful morning repast.

I hate coffee, but the liquid is hot and feels good in my hands and warms my body inside. Our morning oatmeal has raisins in it; I suspect also more than one kind of oat. I discover that there are regular raisins, sweet grape raisins, and cranberry raisins in my oatmeal.

Soaking my brick of bannock in my hot oatmeal helps soften it so that I might bite off pieces without fear. I am terrified of having tooth problems. I saw Doc messing around with that antique dentist’s foot drill discovered as decoration in some dentist’s office. No fucking way do I want Doc drilling in my mouth with that damn thing.

Convoy personnel run about erecting tents again and digging out gear they had just stowed. Since we are staying another day, all of the trucks are started and idled for at least an hour followed by basic vehicle maintenance.

The large heavy US Army trucks are started first, followed by the fuel tanker, and the snow plow. Once the heavy trucks are idling the smaller vehicles such as our Dodge pickup are started.

While I am cranking over the old recalcitrant Dodge Shack judiciously applies WD40 into the air intake behind the air filter. While I am listening to the whine of a cold Cummins diesel starting an unfamiliar white male walks up to my open driver’s window. I assume that he is a convoy member, since he is both armed and within our camp.

The first thing I notice is his body odor; it is a cloying stench that sticks in the back of my throat. This man at one time, before KCAP, was quite obese as a great fold of skin hangs below his belt flopping against his legs.

The odoriferous man’s Duct Tape patched faded black US Navy enlisted rain coat has seen better days. Mismatched court shoes cover his feet, protected by black plastic trash bags. Baggy bright clown orange cotton sweat pants held up with a thin braided leather belt peeks out from below his coat.

A ratty slimy green Seattle Supersonics knit cap fails covering his head while allowing stringy greasy bangs of mouse brown hair to fall into his face. Cracked thick eyeglasses with brown plastic frames fight a losing battle against gravity sliding repeatedly down his blade thin nose.

The unfamiliar man carries a corroded 9mm single shot pistol once made famous by the CIA in the 1960s. The so-called “deer gun” was a successor to the Liberator pistol of World War Two, carries three rounds in the butt of the ugly gun.

Supposedly destroyed, after the Vietnam War escalated beyond what a clandestine weapon would prove useful, I have never observed a deer gun except in pictures. The few deer guns evaluated in Vietnam were believed abandoned in that country, but it appears as if at least one returned to the States.

The strange man approaches my driver’s door, I abandon starting the cold Dodge. Grabbing the old, side-by-side, twin exposed hammer, sawed off 12 gauge shotgun hanging on the driver’s widow crank, I quickly thumb back both hammers. Chambered in 2.75” the old shotgun, sawed off just past the front hand guard is a terrible weapon up close.

The left barrel is loaded with a buck and ball shell, while the right barrel is loaded with a flechette shell containing 20 mild steel flechettes. Wrapping my left hand over the barrels of the sawed off side by side shotgun, I keep the weapon just underneath the open window sill.

Tightening my grip on the shotgun I lean into the door bracing myself. The front trigger fires the right barrel if the reeking stranger makes a hostile move he is getting a face full of flechettes. The man gives me a smirk that I suppose he thinks looks seductive.

“I’d love to get in your pants,” he says.

“I have one asshole there now I do not need another,” I sneer.