What A Real Zombie Apocalypse Would Be Like (Part 4)

Fyi, this is also post 300 on this blog. Thought y'all should know. Anyway. Let's get on with it.


So, it's been awhile, but the suspense is finally over. Today we discover our fate: whether we make it to the french teacher's farm, how many of us make it, and what awaits us there. The moment you've all been waiting for.
I believe we left off in the bus, just departing on our perilous thirty-five mile journey into the unknown. Yeah, that's about right. So. We're crammed into the bus, all forty-eight of us, along with our garbage bins full of provisions and our miscellaneous weapons. Matt starts the bus, and begins, very slowly at first, to drive out of the parking lot. The bus is silent, our breath held and hearts pounding. the vehicle itself, however, is painfully loud, barreling through the silent, sunlit morning like a rhinocerous or something similar. As we reach the main road, our nervousness abates slightly and we breathe, though hesitantly.
"Which way?" Matt glances momentarily at the french teacher as he asks this. She begins to give him directions, but is immediately cut off by a loud bang on the back of the bus, followed by the smashing of glass and a scream. We all turn to see Juliana, covered in glass and blood, with a gray-green hand, missing a finger, clutched around her throat. The hand, obviously, belongs to a zombie, one that is reaching into the now broken back window, thrashing about and moaning hideously. We realize that the bus is still moving, dragging the zombie along on its feet and causing chunks of flesh to fly out behind it. Matt slams on the brakes, which turns out to be a mistake. The zombie, unfazed by the fact that several toes and large pieces of its feet are missing, now climbs into the back of the bus, where it stands, hand still around Juliana's neck (she was been lifted, choking, a few inches from the seat), in its full zombified glory.
Obviously four days of being undead and rotting in the hot June sun hasn't done much for the zombies' looks, because this zombie has decayed far more than the one we saw on the first day in the kitchen or even later, in the church. The zombie, it turns out, is a she-zombie. Her long hair, which I'm sure was once blond and beautiful, is now red and brown with blood and sewage, and has been yanked out in several places. Her skin is greenish-gray and thin, pulled taut so as to see her bulging blue veins, pusling with thick blood. Pieces of her flesh are missing all over. her eyes are green and bloodshot and protrude almost comically from her head. Her teeth, which have developed into razor-sharp, carnivorous, black things, are bared in a wild, ugly grimace.
The zombie growls and bends down toward Juliana's exposed neck. Juliana is paralyzed with fear and can do little more to defend herself than whimper in utter terror. The zombie is seconds away from infecting her when it freezes and looks down. The tip of a large kitched knife is sticking out of its chest. It roars in frustration and tries to remove it, but all it really succeeds in doing is cutting off a few more fingers. Suddenly the knife slides out, and before we know it the zombie's head has been sliced off, fallen out the window, and is now rolling in the street behind us. Nick E stands, panting, behind the crumpled zombie body, holding the now bloody knife. (A few of us notice, in spite of our shock, that the blood is a very dark, sickly red, almost purple, instead of the usual scarlet, and is also slightly clumpy.)
Juliana is crying hysterically and Nick is in a state somewhere beyond shock,  but the rest of us have grown relatively used to these random attacks and the equally random slayings associated with them, and therefore Matt starts the bus again and we continue on our merry way.
We don't go far before we see it. This time Matt stops the bus reflexively, and we all jerk foward. None of us notice this, however, because we are all too focused on the scene in front of us. We are on Highway 5, looking out over the parking lot of Target at what at first must just be a horrible nightmare, but upon some very explitive speculation by a few people in the bus is concluded to be extremely real. The Target parking lot is filled, literally filled, packed, with what seems to be the entire zombified population of our town. They are stacked, smashed, crushed, and shoved together, some dead, but most undead. Sprays of blood and the occasional carelessly tossed body part are observed as we watch them interact; they fight, eat each other, shuffle aimlessly (in what little space there is for aimless shuffling), and some are even...mating. The stench that wafts from the giant stewpot of undead bodies is so incredibly, awfully strong that none of us can breathe, for if we do, the inside of our noses feel like we're breathing in ammonia. The odor burns and gags us, and more than a few people vomit, adding to the stifling smell.
Luckily, the sound emitted from the parking lot is almost as strong as the odor, and most of the zombies don't notice us (either that or they're too busy enjoying their dinner of brain casserole and a side of phalanges to care). Unfortunately, a great many of them do notice us, and start to amble in our direction. Their 'ambling' picks up speed, and just as the mass is almost upon us, someone screams at Matt and he propels the bus forward as fast as it will go.
Our group realizes with dismay that our plans of raiding the grocery stores are no longer possible. Target is off-limits for obvious reasons, and the other grocery stores will be inaccessible with the amount of zombies that are congregated in such close proximity to them. They maybe extremely dull and incapable of concious thought, but it is clear that they are now on alert, possibly because of the smell of fresh flesh that passed so tantalizingly close to them. It looks like we're just going to have to use the food that the french teacher has waiting for us at her farm, and hope that that is enough to sustain the group of us for however long we have to stay there. As we pass through the town in the direction of Victoria (and whatever lies beyond Victoria), we see destruction everywhere we look. Many buildings are burned, though whether they were burned by accident or in some attempt by whatever other humans survived to keep zombies at bay, we don't know. Bodies, of both humans and zombies, litter the sides of the highway and the areas beyond, and whatever buildings aren't burned suffer extreme damages in the form of broken glass, destroyed walls, and utter chaos inside. We do see the occasional live zombie who, when we pass by with our huge rumbling yellow bus, looks up from whatever it's eating to stare hungrily, attempts to follow us in slow, stumbling drunken steps, and eventually gives up and grunts angrily.
Gradually, conversation begins around the bus, though in hushed and nervous tones. We reach Victoria, but upon the french teacher's instruction pass right through it and continue on our way to Waconia and Norwood Young America. A little more than a half hour after we encountered the zombies in Target, we exit the highway in favor of a long, hilly dirt road that seemingly leads to the middle of nowhere. A few miles on this road brings us to another dirt road, which after two long minutes ends up at an isolated, slightly battered-looking farm. Matt stops the bus and we unload, then stand silently in a row, surveying our new, hopefully temporary home.
The house itself is relatively large, looks pretty old, but also give off an air of comfort and invitation with its peeling blue paint and creaky white porch. There is a barn off to the right of the house, once a brilliant red but now faded and chipped, which is huge and could probably fit our school's entire student body, squeezed tightly. Derek aka Backpack Kid immediately goes over to the barn and, with some difficulty, pushes open one of its huge doors. A hayloft lines the perimeter, and the floor is adorned with twelve empty stalls, six on each side. A small hole in the roof lets in a stream of sunshine, lighting the otherwise dark and musty space. Behind the barn is a shed, small and according to the french teacher, filled with weapons. She also assures us that beneath the house is a cellar, filled with food to feed our group for at least a year. Everything we see is comforting, but nothing, nothing even close to as comforting as the fact that there hasn't been a single zombie in sight for the last eight miles of the trip. Here, it seems, we will finally be safe.

So. We're going to live at the french teacher's house, but for how long? Will the zombies really stay away for that long? Will we be able to defend ourselves if they don't? Is there anyone that can rescue us? Find out in -you guessed it- part 5.