Zomblog: Snoe's Journey Read online

  This is a people who believed until the end that there would always be enough land for everybody to live peacefully. Yet, there were those who saw the White Man as a human locust. I simply do not have enough knowledge of history to say one way or the other, but I do have enough knowledge now to say that the idea of reservations is reprehensible. I do hope that, once this is over, there can be some sort of bridge built between the White Man and the Native American.

  If we do hope to outlast the zombies, there are a lot of bridges that need building. If I am truly some sort of symbol, then I want to survive this coming battle if for no other reason than to start a process that will urge everybody to see value in one another no matter the differences.

  It is not like I feel that I have any answers. I just think that perhaps I have been given a rare opportunity. For whatever reason, people listen to me like I have something worth saying. For the first time in my life, I might actually be grateful to be the daughter of two well-known individuals.

  Sunday, August 28th

  Too much rain to do anything…we can barely see five feet in front of us. Trying to attack an enemy now could be a disaster. At least that is what everybody is saying. Personally, I think we would all have the same handicap.

  Chapter 4

  Thursday, September 1st

  Sunset Fortress and everything around it…all the homes, workshops and meeting houses…gone. We are now moving around on the flanks of General Carson and his army.

  So here is what we ran into once the weather cleared enough for us to move out. There were more undead to deal with. I think they are simply drawn by all the activity, because there was not all that much noise. In fact, we did not know the fate of the Sunset Fortress until we came within sight of it.

  I know that it had been hit pretty hard when the NAA first attacked, but when I say gone, I mean that it has been reduced to a pile of rubble. There are signs that something heavy was here and Brian says that his scouts report that a sort of ramming device was used.

  Angel’s scouts were busy and were not able to get to the scene in time. I guess they had more troubles with zombies than Brian’s men. Still, there have been no casualties from the Natives while Brian lost three of his patrol. There are a lot of walkers in the area. In fact, never in my life have I seen so many here around Corridor 26. They have always been out in what we consider the ‘wilderness’ areas; more of a problem for the local tribes than for us.

  What we are sure of is that General Carson faced some sort of resistance here. That would indicate to me that Betty got the word here and something is in place. From what I see, it looks like this was mostly a harassing gesture. I saw breaches in the walls that were from the first NAA attack. It looks like nothing more than a sheet-metal fence was put in place and that would not have held against any serious zombie threat, so I feel safe in assuming that Warehouse City is where the people of Corridor 26 are going to make their stand.

  The general seems pretty arrogant. He has made no effort to set up any sort of rear guard. Perhaps he suffers from that ‘bully’ mentality. He thinks that he is the biggest and baddest, so he simply does not worry about anybody threatening him.

  Friday, September 2nd

  We have a prisoner.

  Saturday, September 3rd

  I am afraid that all we have done may be for nothing. In the distance, black clouds billow skyward as Warehouse City burns. Thousands of undead have streamed in through several places in the barriers that were breeched with the use of massive explosive devices.

  The prisoner actually told us anything we needed to know, but, as he reminded us time and again, we would be helpless to stop it. Had we arrived a week earlier, we might have been able to harass the general’s forces, but even then, it is unlikely that we would have been able to stop him.

  Besides our being seriously outnumbered, General Carson has mastered the art of using the undead to shield his flanks as well as to act as fodder when he attacks. At least we know why there was no real sort of rear guard. We had to keep our focus on the zombies, that effectively kept us from doing anything resembling an offensive.

  Brian and the Freetown Army lost almost a quarter of their numbers by simply charging in and thinking that they could use the undead in the same manner and to the same effect as the general. Of course, had Brian waited until the interrogation was over, it is likely that he would have acted with more caution.

  It seems that the NAA has been very busy these past couple of decades. They have created a sort of human-zombie hybrid. We don’t really understand it because the soldier that we captured only had a very limited knowledge, but they have somehow managed to utilize people who show immunity by “half turning” them. (That is the way the captive described it, we are really quite clueless as to what that means.) I guess they keep a heavy rear guard of these “Anomalies” (again, his word). The zombies that they lure in arrive and then find nothing that they are interested in because I guess these anomalies can actually walk amongst the undead without being attacked.

  They use these anomalies to lead the charge once they breach the wall as well. And that was the next piece of disturbing news. Any prisoners that are captured while they march on an objective are kept in cages. When the attack begins and the walls are breached, a pair of Anomalies cuff themselves to a prisoner and use them as live bait to draw the undead. Once they clear the fence or whatever, they literally cut the prisoner loose—usually by lopping of the hands.

  How can we fight this?

  Sunday, September 4th

  I will never be able to give Mama Janie her proper burial. The building—along with almost all the others that make up the core of Warehouse City—has been burned to the ground.

  General Carson has left his calling card. The death and destruction are so overwhelming. I see familiar faces amidst the bodies hanging from anything that could be used to string people up. Men, women, and children…he does not seem to care about life on any level.

  So, after spending the day cutting people down, it seems that there is going to be a meeting called in just a little while. I imagine that it will be everybody telling me that my cause is lost and that the chase is over.

  I am sitting here against the only partially burned base of a tree. I remember this tree from when I was little. It had the most perfect branches, almost like it grew for the sole purpose of having swings hung from its lower boughs. I think every child in Warehouse City has come to this tree and used the swings. It seems that the general has some sort of intel, or that this was a cruel coincidence, but it was here that most of the children were hung.

  I know that I will not be able to do anything to this bastard by myself, but I will not be walking away from this. I fully expect Brian and his Freetown force to pack it in, and no doubt Angel will not agree to continue to chase this army with the scales being tipped so far out of balance when we lose two-thirds of our men. She is not going to allow her people to be slaughtered, and if I am being honest, that is exactly what will happen if we try to fight General Carson after Brian’s people go home.

  However, that does not mean that I will be giving up. I have no idea what I am going to do, but I won’t just walk away again. I did that once…and if I am going to die, it will be doing everything that I can to kill General Carson.

  Monday, September 5th

  Shows what I know.

  The meeting was more of a gathering. Everybody came to the town square and Brian got up on a platform that had been used as a gallows. When Angel joined him, I was ready to hear them talk about going home.

  Nope.

  “You see what has been done here,” Brian said, his voice calm, but with so much power behind it that it gave me chills. The crowd was absolutely silent so that everybody could hear. “To my Native Brothers and Sisters, I say that this is why we have separated ourselves from the White Man. But, to you, the White Brothers and Sisters who stand beside us, I say that you can no more paint every white man and woman with the same brush
as you can the Native, Black, Hispanic, Asian…or any other race.

  “I am proud to stand here with you and say that the dawn of the Seventh Generation has come. The signs long ago foretold have been revealed, and now we must bring about the change in this world that allows for the spirits of nature to breathe new life into this world. For that to happen, the perpetrator of the horrors that we have all seen here must be brought down.

  “While we can never assure that there will not be another demon to replace this one, it is my sworn duty as a believer of the prophecies of the Seventh Generation to do all in my power to nurture beauty and put an end to the ugliness of the Old World. I call on all my Native Brothers and Sisters to clasp hands with those not of our blood and stand together to bring the return of beauty to this world.”

  I just stood there, staring up at him in amazement. And as he spoke, Angel nodded her agreement! Looking around, I saw other heads nodding…Native, White, Black, and everything in between; we became one tribe in that moment. That is what I feel in my heart.

  Thursday, September 8th

  For some reason, the general has gone west. He is following the trail that still remains from where the old highway cut through the mountain range that lies between the area once known as the Willamette Valley and the Oregon Coast.

  I do not know of any settlements along this route. That is not to say there not tribes that might dot the way, but nothing resembling the Corridor settlements. Speaking with Brian and Angel, neither of them know about anything substantial, so this is a mystery.

  In other news, Jimmy and a scouting party returned just before dark this evening. They found Betty! In all the insanity of the past couple of days, she slipped my mind. I feel awful. And here is an even sweeter bit of news…Selina is with her.

  I guess they are spending the night at Warehouse City and will be catching up with us as soon as possible. I imagine that Betty is heartbroken. I understand exactly how she feels. I have had a while to process things with having lost Mama Janie, Jenifer, and even Phaedra, a while ago.

  Friday, September 9th

  We are looking down into a small village. From here it is difficult to really know exactly what is going on, but we all agree that several of the “Anomalies” are down there with a legion of undead.

  Right now, we are completely surrounding the village. We might be too late to save the people down there, but not one of those freaks is going to escape.

  They want to capture at least one of the Anomalies. I have no idea why. It is not like we can do anything with them. We have no lab, no way to really examine them. If it were up to me, we would simply kill them all and move on.

  Saturday, September 10th

  I guess we know why I am not making the decisions. The Anomaly that we captured is a woman. Her name is unimportant and I don’t plan on learning it. She is a monster…much more of a horror than any zombie. However, the one thing that they could not engineer out of these freaks is the sensation of pain. An Anomaly is very much alive, despite the fact that you would not know it by looking into its eyes.

  It stares at you with angry black orbs that have only the slightest ring of white around them. They have a body temperature that matches their eyes: cold. This one felt as if it had been at the bottom of a mountain lake. Her skin was an unnatural shade of blue and her lips were almost purple. Her hair was brittle and looked like it would break if you touched it and her tongue was gray. Her blood, that was the creepiest part…it was almost green with hints of blue, but her veins looked black and seemed to stand out from her skin.

  At first she acted like she could not talk…wait, I should back up a minute. It was how we found her that I should start.

  When morning came, we moved in on the village. I don’t think anybody actually got any sleep, though. The screams lasted all night, and more of them were from children than adults.

  As we moved in, we cut down anything that looked like a zombie. There were heavily armed escorts scattered about; obviously General Carson considered these things to be somewhat valuable. We did not bother to take any prisoners when it came to the regular soldiers, but we do now have one of their flamethrowers and some top-of-the-line crossbows. Also, we found vials of this oily substance on several of the soldiers.

  We would later discover (while questioning the Anomaly) that it is some sort of paralyzing toxin. They like to take their prisoners alive to use feeders for the Anomalies. Yep, they eat the living as well, but they prefer their victims not to be squirming. Like I said…monsters. Zombies simply do what they do and have no feeling about it. They are no more evil than a snake or bear; they simply act according to their nature.

  These Anomalies know exactly what they are doing when they eat a person…alive. And they enjoy it.

  No, that is not an editorial…that is straight from the mouth of the monster. I heard it with my own ears. And we didn’t even need torture to compel such a statement.

  It seems that all of the Anomalies are volunteers! These…people, if that is what you can call them, were all immune and offered themselves willingly to be turned into a weapon. And really, what else could you call them? They use live humans as bait and draw hordes of the undead to a target location for General Carson.

  I probably don’t need to tell you, but in case you wondered…this is a program that Dominique began. It seems that she has had her plan in motion for quite a while.

  As for the actual “useful” intel that we gathered regarding the general and his army…they are heading to a facility on the coast near a settlement situated near what used to be the town of Tillamook. It seems that town used to be famous for, if you can believe this, cheese. I guess there are stranger things to be famous for.

  They converted the cheese factory to a “weapons” depot. I guess they are creating an army of these Anomalies. General Carson is heading there to oversee the final stages. If what we heard is even remotely true, then we have to act now.

  Here is a very stripped down version of the plan as we were able to get it from that horrible creature. I guess there are less than a hundred of these Anomalies. (I am proud to say we have removed one quarter of their number if that is the case.) The general is set to “convert” a hundred and forty-four thousand.

  It seems that this group is…wait for it…an extremist faction of The Genesis Brotherhood (how does an extremist group have an extremist faction?). They believe that all of this is some sort of biblical prophecy and that they are the “chosen” of God. First off, I can’t believe that there are a hundred and forty-four thousand living people that were immune. Shows how sheltered we have been in our little corner of the world.

  They have been engaged in this plan since the beginning. I bet Meredith would be very disappointed in herself for not finishing them all off. I know she thought she did…but I wonder what she would say now? These people were scary back then. They have become worse than I think even she could have imagined.

  They have been breeding and indoctrinating these children since Day One. Did I fail to mention that the one we captured was about my age?

  These people really and truly believe the stuff coming out of their mouths. They believe to their core that they are right and acting on behalf of some divine will. We, the living, breathing remnants of mankind, are now nothing more than a fungus that must be at last scraped away.

  Once this army of Anomalies is complete, I guess even General Carson’s days are numbered. He will be nothing more than a hammer to be wielded by these things. And the millions or billions of zombies will be the nail.

  They will be sent to known locations where large herds exist and lay siege to every settlement, town and city. And the Confederated Tribal Lands are tops on the list.

  These Anomalies will be taking to the rails, east to some of the most populated regions from the Old World. They have been using balloons and even sent some of the early Anomalies out to gather the locations of herds that number over a million. If they can mobilize those herds, nothing
can stand before them.

  It would seem that, like the undead, the Anomalies can travel in the areas that people cannot due to existing levels of radiation and toxic air from things like chemical plants and refineries that burned or blew up way back when the whole apocalypse began.

  This “little” invasion was simply a test. The loss of Dominique was barely even felt. It is General Carson and his council that are the real danger. It was just a “lucky” coincidence that she and the general met.

  So now, we have no choice. We must destroy the general, his army, and this facility. If not, then it really is the end…for everybody.

  You see, here is the kicker…General Carson is the head of the Ultimate Doomsday cult. They are not actually seeking to conquer…they want to eliminate ALL of humanity. These undead from the East? They are apparently just as radioactive as the areas that they would be coming from. Even if someplace like the Confederated Tribes could mow them all down (and there is no way that they could even hope to bring down ten percent) the resulting corpses would contaminate everything…the land, anybody who tried to dispose of the bodies. Oh yeah, and you can’t burn them or else the radiation goes airborne.

  Once they are confident that they have wiped out all of North America, the army would move south. And from there…they even have a plan that includes going overseas.

  What brand of crazy even conceives of such things?

  And here is the most disturbing revelation we discovered; these Anomalies want this because they see this as the “next step in evolution”! They believe that it is time for an extinction event and that they are destined to take their place as God’s new chosen people.