Jake's Story, ch 7

I really went back and forth about posting this, because I liked putting up a chunk of chapters last time.

However, after polishing, this chapter is so good I needed to share it.

Enjoy!

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Jake was starting to get hungry, which was a problem, because when he passed a freshly dead deer on the side of the road, he got a feeling like his mouth was watering  Of course, being dead, he couldn’t actually be hungry, and his mouth was likely not watering, so he quickly understood the way things were heading.

Apparently, undead hunger was part of his new existence.  Great.

As he walk-shuffled, he noticed some proof that some people in this area weren’t hiding at home.  Someone would have had to be out and about to run over a deer, for instance.  Then about an hour later, he got more concrete proof that people were out when someone shot him.

One minute he was peacefully walking down the street, trying his best just to think, and the next he had a hole in his stomach.  He didn’t feel any pain, and his undead senses took a second or two to register the blast, but it’d definitely been a gunshot.  Lights cut on in the distance, and an engine revved to life.  Someone had either figured out what was going on since Purple Rain, or were psychos.  Jake didn’t want to take a chance on either.

He desperately moved to the shoreline, and as vehicles were speeding toward him, he ungracefully dumped himself forward, falling into the water and crawling forward as fast as he could.  Behind him, he could barely hear a muffled, “Did it just run away!?”  Concussions echoed through the water, likely people shooting, but wasn’t too worried.  Bullets really didn’t work very well after being shot into water, and he was already a few feet deep.

After descending a few feet farther, he paused to look back.  The rising sun gave him some light to see by, and he could definitely spot the silhouettes of the people who’d just take shots at him.  It looked like there were two trucks, and one had a light bar on top.  Jake guessed these were good ol’ boys from the area who had gotten the right idea from horror movies, but had executed really, really badly--luckily for Jake.

The men with rifles were unlucky, though.  Jake spotted new silhouettes behind them.  Oh shit, he thought.  There wasn’t time to warn the men even if he knew how.  Even with his foggy undead eyes, he was able to see the shadows fall on the men with guns.

He cautiously moved up the bank, slowly letting his head break the surface of the lake so he could see better, and his fears were confirmed.  Two ghouls had already killed and begun eating the humans--one had fallen on the occupants of each truck.  There’d been two men in one truck, and two in the other.  The shooting had likely attracted the ghouls.

Jake remembered how the zombies had only freaked out earlier when he’d gotten too close, and gave both ghouls a wide berth as he left the lake.  They both glanced up, paused, then went back to their grisly meals.  

The trucks were still running.  Jake carefully bent down to pick up a rifle, some sort of cheap AR-15, and climbed into one of the vehicles as best he could.  He didn’t relax until the doors were closed and locked.  The glass wouldn’t stop a ghoul for long, but it might prevent them from sensing he was anything more than just a zombie.

He looked out the windshield at one ghoul that was busy snacking on a hand, and if he’d still been alive, he would have shuddered.  Ghouls were lower class monsters, and the Purple Rain had created some, but they were far more dangerous than zombies.  For one, they moved a hell of a lot faster, and while not exactly intelligent, they could be crafty.  These two working together was an example of how devious they could be.

Both monsters were both sort of shaped like people, but with greyish leathery skin, no nose, big teeth, and long, clawed fingers.  If Jake hadn’t spent so long among real demons, he might have said they looked demonic.

As Jake searched the inside of the truck for weapons, he wondered if he could do something about the two creatures eating men they’d just killed.  It didn’t sit right with him to leave these monsters running around to kill more people.  He’d have to think about the problem a long time to allow his dead, zombie brain to catch up.

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out a way to kill both of them.  Even if he somehow managed to kill one with either his truck, or his pistol, or even the rifle he’d picked up, the other one would be triggered to attack.  Ghouls weren’t very smart, but they had at least animal intelligence.  They were also mean and strong.  The truck wouldn’t be much protection if one wanted to get in, much less two, and there was no guarantee he’d be able to take one out if he initiated an attack.  Being a zombie was pretty much awful for doing anything.

“Maybe I can still give it a shot,” he tried to mutter, but it came out as a low moan.  

Jake tried to draw his pistol as stealthily as he could--the rifle would be too long to realistically use in the truck, and he wasn’t sure if he could operate the controls very well as he was.  While he moved around, he caught sight of two smart phones where the previous driver and passenger had left them.  With a shrug, Jake pocketed them, or at least tried to.  He didn’t have the dexterity to put them in his actual pockets while sitting down, so he stuffed them down the front of his pants.  The phones were held in place against his undead kibbles and bits by his underwear.

“Seriously, fuck Ahriman,” he growl-moaned.  Since he was likely going to be driving soon and didn’t have the greatest control behind the wheel, he made sure to put his seatbelt on.  But then as Jake was trying to figure out which of the ghouls to attack, the decision was taken out of his hands.  The passenger side window shatters as gunshots rang out somewhere behind him.  The sound of marbles landing a tin roof let Jake know that other bullets he couldn’t see were hitting his borrowed truck.

What the hell? He thought.  A glance in his mirrors didn’t reveal much besides muzzle flashes, but he could figure out what was likely happening.  The men who’d just been killed had friends who’d gone looking for them.

Jake moaned in frustration and fear, jerkily putting his foot on the brake to put the vehicle in drive.  At the same time he hit the gas, one of the ghouls took off toward where the gunfire had come from.  The other swiveled its head as he tore past, and to his horror, he vaulted up into the bed of the truck.

“Fuck!” he tried to growl.  Zombie eyes were terrible, so as he barreled down the road, he had to keep correcting the wheel as best he could, all while bullets peppered the truck, and the ghoul slammed a clawed hand through the back window.  “Fuck!”

It was hard to tell how many times Jake had been shot so far, but he was still undead, and his brain was still intact.  It likely wouldn’t be for long the way things were going, though.  Jake yanked the wheel to the left, gunning the engine down a side street, out of the line of sight of his would-be shooters.  He was hearing fewer firearms firing now--maybe the ghoul had gotten one or two of them.

Jake roared down the street in his stolen truck, sideswiping vehicles parked on the side of the road, and hoped that his shitty driving would help dislodge the angry, freaked out ghoul trying to force its way into the cab.  Unfortunately, he had no such luck, and the thing was hissing, its eyes wild, tearing up the seats as it tried to reach him.  It must not know what was happening, and was trying to attack the nearest perceived threat.

That’s right, Jake though.  Ghouls have better eyesight at night.  Sunlight really messes them up, and this one is new, so it’s probably disoriented.

He cut the wheel to the right, zooming down a bumpy street directly through a trailer park.  As he tried to keep the truck moving straight and not plowing into someone’s house, the ghoul’s claws actually hit Jake’s seat.  Its second swipe took a chunk of his upper arm.

There was really only one thing to do.  The road came to a dead end, and a particularly large tree seemed like a good target.  “Fuck this.  Geronimo!” Jake yelled.  It came out as a croak.  He gunned the engine for one last burst of speed, tried to angle the truck to hit one corner, and successfully nailed the tree.

Jake remembered to squint his eyes shut at the last second so he couldn’t actually see the impact.  His zombie eyes were terrible, but they were better than nothing.

***

Apparently even zombies could be dazed, because it took a few moments for Jake to start registering his surroundings again.  Luckily, the angle he’d hit the tree had spared him from having a steering wheel through his chest.  The ghoul hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and had been more or less hanging through the back window and surfing the seats before the impact.  Now half its face was through the windshield.  It was almost entirely unmoving, but Jake knew it probably wouldn’t stay stunned very long.

Ghouls were tough.

Jake saw his pistol where it had landed at his feet, luckily barely in reach.  He bent down, trying to be as fast as possible while not jostling the ghoul.  Unfortunately, nothing he could do now was smooth, and the monster began to stir even before Jake was able to touch the Springfield.  His hand wrapped around the grip, and he began straightening as the ghoul’s eyes snapped open.

Since subtlety wasn’t an option anymore, Jake leaned back as far as he could, tilted the pistol up, and began unloading into the ghoul.  The monster shrieked and struggled to bring its deadly claws to bear, but was tied up in the destroyed seats and other wreckage of the cab.  As the .40 caliber bullets slammed into the creature’s body, popping through the roof, the monster gave up on freeing itself and mauled Jake’s shoulder with its mouth full of unnatural teeth.

If Jake had been alive, it might have really hurt.  As it was, he could feel the damage, but it was more like pressure, not pain.  Jake just kept firing, jerking the trigger and emptying almost the entire magazine.  The last thing he saw in the ghoul’s eyes was confusion as it seemed to realize that Jake was a zombie, and it wasn’t getting a mouth full of blood.  Could it remember the fact he’d come out of the lake?  Jake didn’t know and didn’t really care.

The thing’s head and torso was a mess, and Jake was covered in ghoul blood.  It took him a while to figure out how to get out of the truck, since his door was bent.  Even though his thoughts were slow, he could still remember the people who’d been shooting at him, and that getting the fuck out of dodge, especially right now during the daytime, was really important.

Jake threw the rifle he’d confiscated out the front window, pocketed his pistol, and crawled over the dead ghoul as best he could.  One advantage of being dead was that he wasn’t really slowed down by his injuries--apparently all his ligaments and important bits were still working.  The broken glass didn’t phase him, either.  Since he made sure to protect his eyes, climbing over sharp, cutting bits wasn’t a problem.  Somehow, the thought of finding gloves, safety glasses, and a helmet managed to occur to him as he escaped the wreck of the truck.

Before he was completely out, he noticed that the a magic stone had appeared under the dead ghoul and he pocketed it.  It was super lucky to get another magic stone so soon after finding the one from the zombie earlier, but he didn't have time to celebrate.

Once he was completely out, he found, then slung the rifle and began walking in the direction the forest was thickest.  One of the nearby mobile home curtains twitched, and he thought he heard a muffled scream of fear.  Luckily, none of the doors opened.  Jake eyed the woodline, then the mobile homes, and finally decided to take a few precious moments to do something decent.

A nearby fire pit had some sticks with blackened ends.  Jake grabbed a burned stick, shuffled up to the nearest door, and began to write.  It took him a really long time, and the letters were barely legible, but he managed to get down, “Everyone stay inside.  Bar the windows.  Do not go out at night.”

In his first life, Jake had seen a statistic at some point that almost overwhelmingly, most survivors in the first few weeks after Purple Rain had hid, or otherwise not taken too many risks before being rescued by military or militia.  There were exceptions--hell, he’d been one of them, but the average person wasn’t a fighter.  Not really.

Jakes wasn’t sure if anyone in this mobile park would heed his warning, but at least someone must have seen him.  If Jake had seen a zombie leave a written message right after the Purple Rain in his first life, he definitely would have paid attention.  Hopefully these people would be smart, heed the warning, and would be luckier than Jake’s family had been.  

As he disappeared into the forest, hoping that monsters would keep leaving him alone as long as he kept his distance and didn’t spook them, Jake’s struggling brain remembered that in order to save his family in this lifetime, he still had to figure out where he was.

He hissed as he realized he could have probably just gotten a letter from a mailbox back at the mobile park and figured it out that way.  I really hate being a zombie, Jake fumed.  Complaining normally didn’t help anything, but since Jake was running on pure, mule-headed stubborness, complaining might actually help keep him going, fueling his spite.

Jake moaned quietly, trying to curse for at least a mile.