GRUNTS
Chapter 1
Meetings:
“Why is your sword dull?”
She asked as she examined my long sword. “ So it will hurt more.” I delivered deadpan. She raised an eyebrow in reply. I returned to sharpening my tomahawk. “ So why sharpen the axe?” She asked, “ Because an axe needs to be sharp to work right.” She paused in confused silence. “And a sword doesn't?”
In reply I gestured at the scattered pieces lying around us. “ Not against them.” Zombies, walkers, grunts, and squeakers call them whatever you prefer, were a definite nuisance, however nowhere the threat of desperate breathers. Desperate people tend to do insanely desperate things.
I prefer grunts, to refer to the shambling hordes of not quite dead. This was due to the gasping and grunting sounds they made. Gaspers just didn't sound right to me. Squeakers didn't convey the proper gravitas. The undead grunts sounded just like Atlantic Grunt flopping around in the boat fresh caught. I had caught plenty of grunt as a kid fishing in South Florida. For probably the hundred and tenth time today I wondered who was worse, the grunts or the breathers. It wasn't even mid day yet.
By now you are probably wondering why a sword. Aren't guns available? It is the American South after all. The principle problem with firearms happens to be noise.
Loud noise draws the attention of both grunts and breathers. Even so called silenced weapons are noisy. Real life is nothing like the movies or video games. Sometimes I carried a loaded crossbow, however the reload time tended to be discouraging for defensive use.
Add in the fact that only a destructive head shot instantly drops a grunt. You try head shots while running and the grunts are shambling along weaving drunkenly. Go ahead try it. I popped a grunt with a quarrel once, right between the eyes. It merely grunted and kept moving.
Decapitation is far easier than a head shot, plus a sword is much more quiet than a gun. Cut off a leg and the grunts can’t chase you. The usual condition of the infected grunts bodies didn't really stand up to abuse very well. Rotting infected tissues don't hold together well. Apparently the infection caused intense fever that killed the hosts higher brain function, leaving a barely live shambling appetite that slowly died.
A grunt seldom lasted more than a month or two before literally falling apart. That didn't stop panic and madness in population centers due to the rapid progress of the infection. The vast majority of destruction came from frightened desperate people doing stupid things. The cities went up in flames from riots, looting and turf wars as gangs tried to set up their own little fiefdoms in the aftermath.
Out here in the country, little rioting had occurred. However diseases had spread like wildfires. New Covid variants, various bioweapons that had been used by idiots, and radioactive fallout from the brief nuclear exchange, and the meltdown of nuclear reactors in power stations spread the misery thoroughly.
Two years into the madness things showed no signs of recovery. What areas that remained functional did so because they had been large Army installations. Good luck trying to approach their front door, er, gate. Everything thing else was reduced to nineteenth century tech at best.
By far the majority of wandering breathers had become pre neolithic scavengers. Those tech skills and video games meant less than nothing in the new old world.
I had survived by GTFO when the first images of grunts hit social media. Having been through the 2019-20 “ mostly peaceful” riots I got out of dodge before anyone had started reporting rumors of zombies. I had initially thought it was flakka, the bath salt zombie drug to blame. Boy was I wrong.
The Smoky mountains proved a good hiding spot, relatively speaking. Plenty of game, fresh water, caves, lots of cozy hiding places easily defended. The problems came from people. Luckily people were usually easily avoided. Which is what I had done, avoided people when ever possible.
Welcome to the new old world! Call it the great upset reset, we are Devo, yeah, whip it good! Yeehaw, and screw you very much. I checked called to myself. She eyed me warily. Guess I couldn't blame her much. “ Hey, what do I call you?” I asked her. She took her time answering. “Lizzy, Lizzy Hale” she eventually answered. She was definitely too young to be the Lizzy Hale from Halestorm, a seriously kick ass band.
“Ok, Lizard it is” I replied. “ Call me Dylan, Dylan Roberts.” I decided to go with a classical reference. “ Right, Dill, Dill pickle it is.” She shot back.
I was not offended in the least in fact I was a little bit impressed. It's not like my name was Dylan any more than she was Lizzy. This was a promising start. She had stuck around, and gave better than she got in our little morning work out. The main question, unanswered as of yet, remained. Could I trust her? Should I? Did I want to even?
I had never really been a people person even before the great Kazoo of doom had sounded. Less so after as all the masks came off and the true state of people came out to play.
I sheathed my long sword after tucking my tomahawk under my belt, shrugged into my old Alice pack and began walking. I figured she would either join me or she wouldn't, I wasn't going to ask. I wasn't going to turn her away either. It was her choice. I wasn't headed towards my spot anyway so I figured Why not see what's up. If she was a flake or useless or a back stabber, I could dump her long before she had a clue where to find me.
Lizard caught up pretty quickly. She had slung an olive drab duffle bag over her shoulder carrying a long handled brush axe over her right shoulder. I had noticed her using it earlier, it seemed very effective for her even without pole arm training. A brush axe closely resembles a shorter Lochaber axe or billhook, without the hook. All in all a near perfect weapon for grunts one on one.
Lizard matched my pace quietly. I briefly wondered if she was studying me, like I was assessing her. Considering the fact of her survival thus far, I knew she couldn't be a total idiot, so of course she was watching closely.
The afternoon passed quietly. We covered about four miles according to the road side mile markers. Time to find a defensible place to rest and decide if and when I was going back to my spot.