Chapter 10
Scavenging Is Fun To Do
I round up Benji and tell the others we are going out to scout the terrain and make sure everything is safe. As soon as we get outside Benji looks at me and says, “Okay, what are we really doing?”
“First scavenging trip of the zombie apocalypse little brother. Gear up and meet me at the barn. We are going to bike around to stay quiet and try and find a few items before they get scarce.”
“Sounds good, I will meet you down at the barn in ten minutes.”
I go down to the barn and pull out a couple of mountain bikes. My dad always has some bikes around. He used to go to garage sales with my mom and to her great annoyance bought just about any bike that was cheap and then went home to fix them up. After they were fixed and ready, as he put it “In case the grandkids need one” they would get put in the barn and forgotten about. The whole place would be overflowing with bikes if it were not for the fact that every three to six months mom would send him out on an errand and then get myself, Benji, or Brittany to help her load them up into the back of the truck and she would go down and donate them to be sold at the local second hand stores. Dad must have known what was going on, but he wisely said nothing and was just happy to have more space so he could fix more bikes.
The last bike run to the stores was around six weeks ago so dad had a good variety of bikes to choose from. Benji showed up a few minutes later looking like some sort of apocalypse warrior. He had a bandolier of ammunition, two rifles, a shotgun, three pistols, and I don’t know how many knives. I couldn’t help laughing.
“Um, Benji are you going to start a war or something?”
“What you think this is too much?”
“Yes Benji, that is too much. We want to be quick and quiet not start a war that can be heard three states away.”
“I just wanted to be prepared.”
“I understand, but here is the thing, can you even bike and move comfortably with all of that on you?”
“Hmm, I forgot about that.”
I could see him start to get a sad look when he thought he would have to leave everything behind.
“Benji, try this load out. One higher caliber rifle, two pistols, one to two knives, and a survival .22 broken down into a back pack with ammunition a snack and some water.”
He quickly went to the truck I had driven in and started making adjustments. I had the load out on that I had suggested to him with the exception of a swiss army knife in the back pack and my axe-bar instead of the knives. I still was carrying the .45 pistol on my hip and the .22 in a shoulder holster. The shotgun needed to stay behind for weight and movement reasons. The rifle I chose was still my reliable lever action .30 .30. I had 50 rounds of .45 ammo and .30 .30 ammo in the back pack along with a thousand rounds of .22 ammunition. A brick of 500 hollow points and a brick of 500 target rounds. This was another reason I favored the .22 for survival situations. The thousand rounds for it weighed the same as the 100 rounds of larger caliber ammunition. Yes, it might take two or three shots to put something down instead of one, but unless I was going against some mutated large ogre, a .22 will get the job done and the weight of the rifle and ammunition is less than half of all my other guns.
Soon Benji had modified his load out and came out with his bike choice.
“What are we looking for Mark?”
“Well we should probably bring back two vehicles this time and fill them with supplies if possible.”
“What types are you thinking? I know the area better than you so maybe I can think of some different places to look.”
“Excellent idea. Right now I am thinking we should convoy with two 4-wheel drive trucks, two 4-wheel drive suv’s, and two minibuses. The two suv’s will be pulling trailers of items, I still have not decided on the type of trailer, but I am thinking large horse trailers since those are easily available in this area and would protect both supplies and people so if we had extra we had to cram into them.”
“I assume the minibuses are for passengers. Did you pick them just because most people could drive them?”
“That and the space they have for gear.”
“The gas mileage is horrible in those things so why not a van?”
“I was thinking that the bus is a more solid defense in case we get stuck somewhere.”
“Well yeah it would be, but you can take a 4-wheel drive van to places that a mini-bus would never be able to reach. A mini-bus might get stuck just on the side of the road, but a 4-wheel drive van can drive almost anywhere.”
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“Benji, you are a genius. I haven’t seen a 4-wheel drive van since my college days when we had them for the science department trips.”
“We have a couple out at the nuclear site, which is too far for a bike ride, but the USC-Aiken campus is just ten miles away. They might have some just like your college did.”
“Alright we will try the college. If nothing else, they should have the large suv’s I want at that dealership nearby.”
With our destination set we took off. It has been a while since I have ridden a bike. My hind end was in pain in less than a mile. Focus Mark, you are at least in good enough shape now that you can ride this bike, that’s a positive. As the crow flies we were probably only between five and seven miles away from the campus, but our trip had to follow backroads for safety. Everything as we bike along looks like a lazy Sunday morning. Cars are parked, animals can be heard, the only thing out of the ordinary is no sound of vehicles anywhere. As we travel along it is peaceful for a while and then suddenly something will throw it out of whack. The first anomaly was a group of four zombies eating something in a driveway with blood flowing down that same driveway. It made the whole trip seem surreal.
An amazing Sunday bike ride turned into a house of horrors in less than ten seconds. I signaled Benji and we just rode by. One of the zombies lifted their head and stared at us for a second but went back to feeding. That is actually good to note. If zombies are currently feeding they are less likely to chase you. This alone was enough to jolt me back to reality. No matter how picturesque, the world has changed. I need to keep my head in the game.
We arrived at the USC-Aiken campus after another 90 minutes of riding. We definitely did not break any speed records getting here, but the bikes got the job done. We arrived faster than walking and did not attract the attention of a group of zombies through car noise. Heading home would be a different story. We were going to have to park away from the house and deal with any followers before making the final approach. The last thing I wanted was to bring a horde of zombies down on my own family.
I can see several individual shambling people spread throughout the campus. A quick count shows about 35 different zombies wandering around in sight. Let’s double that for safeties sake and say at least 70 zombies. The question is do we deal with them or do we try and sneak past.
“Hey Benji, where do you think they keep their school vehicles?”
“Well, I see two in that parking lot, but I bet that most of them are near or in the maintenance area.”
“That’s sounds like a good place to start. Let’s head out on foot. I can’t ride and fight, and it looks like we might have to fight.”
“Are we going to try and sneak in?”
“I was thinking about it, why?”
“I think we should set up a shooting nest with a couple of different ways out and try and eliminate as many threats as possible.”
“Why is that your recommendation Benji?”
“I think that we are going to be distracted trying to find keys and other things. The less zombies to ambush us, especially when we are leaving the better.”
“I cannot really argue with your logic so let’s do that instead of sneaking in.”
We decide that the stadium would be the best place to set up. The baseball diamond had a press box on top of a set of aluminum bleachers. The bleachers were about five to eight meters high and situated so as long as we were careful we could climb down the back of them or the sides in an emergency. This was our multiple ways out scenario. We force the door to the press box and then reinforced it with the tables and chairs inside so nothing could get in. We climbe the ladder to the rook of the press box and got ready to do some serious shooting.
“Before we start, I only have 50 rounds for the rifle. What do you have Benji?”
“I decided to go with the .45 semi auto carbine and the .45 pistol so I brought 150 rounds that could be used in either one. I also have the .22 target pistol with a brick of 500 hollow points.”
“I have another 50 rounds of .45 ammunition. That takes you up to 200 rounds for the rifle if needed. You are going to be the primary shooter and I will spot for you. If we see them swarming or anything unusual we climb down and get out while we can.”
“Sounds good brother. Let’s see what gunshots from a rifle do to these zombies.”
We quickly put in some ear plugs, guns are loud, and Benji started shooting as I called out targets. I wanted him to start close by to thin out the numbers in case this caused a group to come together. That way we might have a precious few more seconds to escape. I place both our .22 pistols along with a brick of hollow points out for close by shooting. I was going to try and take care of anything that made it to the bleachers. When Benji started shooting it was obvious that the zombies within 400 meters heard it and associated it with food. Either that or they were just reacting to a loud noise. Heads came up and they started searching for source of the noise. Luck and terrain were in our favor. The echoes from the surrounding college buildings seemed to be confusing the zombies more than 200 meters away.
All the zombies inside that range took about five shots to understand where the sound was coming from. The speed of the zombies also varied according to distance. The closer the zombie, the faster they moved towards us. The further away the slower they moved. It almost seemed like they responded to the intensity of the sound. If the sound was loud and close by they were almost running. However, if the sound was softer and further away, they still responded but shuffled in the direction slowly. As I watch I can see that when the zombies get closer and the sound gets louder they do increase their speed. Another important piece of information.
Benji by this point had taken out the ten closest zombies and was reloading. I sighted my rifle at the closest zombie still coming and waited until he was within 150 meters before I fired. I put down three more when they hit that range until Benji whispered that he was ready. We continued this alternating shooting pattern for about five minutes before it started to look like we were going to have to switch things up. I might have underestimated the number of zombies out there. After shooting for a little over five minutes there was a line of dead zombies between 100 and 200 meters out from the press box. The problem was the total number of zombies I saw was not going down. We seem to be pulling in about as many as we are putting down. If this keeps up we will run out of ammunition before the zombies run out of bodies. It is time to try something a little different.