Zomblog II by T. W. Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

here. Tomorrow we move out.
     
    Friday, December 5
     
    Picked up two new members of our group. Well…sorta. Jonathan Scott…he is about six feet tall, and about two hundred and eighty pounds. He is twenty and an Oregon native. He keeps his head shaved save for a Mohawk stripe down the middle, and has fierce brown eyes. His skin is so black it almost looks purple, and even his fingers seem to have muscles. Then, there is Jonathan’s companion; Coach. Coach is a dopey Golden Retriever.
    Jonathan used to be a student at the University of Oregon majoring in journalism and playing football. He made his way to the Portland Metro area in search of his family. He found them. Then he buried them. That is just about all he’ll say about that.
    Coach was the neighbor’s dog. He said that after he dealt with his family, he heard a ruckus coming from the house next door. Figuring that those folks had suffered the same fate as his family, he went over to put them to rest. He was surprised to find the place empty of undead. Even more surprising was that Coach was inside. Alive and well. Although the house was an absolute mess. The funniest part to Jonathan was that Coach had done some rather interesting things to stay alive, including the use of the neighbor’s koi pond as one source of water. Being well house-trained, the clever dog took full advantage of the large, fenced-in backyard. There were a few bones in back…eww. Apparently, Coach is either immune, or eating a zombie doesn’t turn dogs.
    By the way…dogs really hate zombies. That is how we met in a way. Jenifer and I were up on top of the house, scouting for any signs of movement, when we heard a sound that took us a minute to identify; a dog’s bark. Up until then, we’d been sure that the streets were clear. It was quiet and nothing was moving. The barking got closer, and then we saw something that was quite disturbing. From under a pair of cars, two sets of dead hands came out, clutching at the air. Those hands were attached to a pair of hideous zombies. Both were legless, one was actually missing everything from just below the ribcage. It was as if they were lying in wait like a pair of trapdoor spiders. My guess is that they’d been hidden for a while. Both were filthy beyond the normal nastiness.
    The legless one was real slow, but the other was actually scary-fast once it was out from under the car. It could move at what would be equal to an average speed walker. I thought of the purple sweatsuit-clad granny for just a moment. Torso-zombie scooted out from under the car and hand-galloped towards the dog that now stood in the middle of the street, growling.
    Then Jonathan rounded the corner. He was coming at an easy jog and had a golf club—a pitching wedge I would later be told—in his hand. With practiced ease, he brought the wedge down, catching the zombie in the temple. He’d filed the wedge’s face, and it bit into the side of the thing’s head, actually exploding the eye on that side. He brought a hobnailed boot down and crushed the skull in three good stomps sending greyish-black jelly out in a splatter arc. He dispatched the other in much the same way, then went over to the dog and fed it a treat out of a pouch he had on one hip while scratching it behind those big, floppy ears.
    I glanced at Jenifer who shrugged. We decided to trust the dog. I cleared my throat. In an instant Jonathan had a pistol I’d not seen—up until that moment—in his hand. Coach made a ‘woof’ sound and bounded over, where he ran in circles, looking up at us until we climbed down and acknowledged him with praise and petting. And that is how we met Jonathan and Coach, the Golden Retriever.
     
    Saturday, December 6
     
    The sky is clear. The sun is shining bright. And it is FREEZING! We are inside the mostly intact remains of the clubhouse of a golf course. The place is fairly quiet. Once in a while we see something stumbling around out there on the fairways. We’ve