The Swamp Read Free Page A

at what people would pack, only a few cars held much of anything that was worth anything today.
                  It wasn’t until the third vehicle, a big crew cab pickup, that he found a person, or at least what had once been a person. What was left of a young man in a john deer cap and plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off, moaned and reached towards him. This one wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, but the trucks height made the creature lean down as it grabbed for him, and it wasn’t smart enough to overcome this angle and fall out of the trucks window.  He knew the advantage of finding a vehicle that still had someone inside meant that it hadn’t been looted yet. Sam searched around for a weapon, unwilling to use his gun because of the noise, and found a length of metal pipe. He thrust it like a spear, and after several blows, the thing stopped moving.
                  When the zombie was finished off, he opened the truck door and let it fall to the ground. Inside the truck, he found a treasure chest of goodies. The back seat was full of food, two cases of army surplus MREs and a bag full of protein bars. In the bed of the truck he found sleeping bags, a tent, a Coleman stove with a couple of extra propane cylinders and a small back pack full of odds and ends necessary for survival. It contained a good hunting knife, water purification tablets and four different methods of starting fires. In the tool box behind the cab, he found a variety of firearms. He helped himself to all of it; after all, Bubba didn’t need it anymore. It took him the better part of an hour to stow it all in the Isuzu, and it barely held it all. This find made the rest of his trip to the swamp much more comfortable. He didn’t have to take this kind of risk again.
                  It wasn’t until that night as he rolled out the sleeping bag in the stock room of a long closed country store that he found the bottle.
                  “God bless rednecks” he said aloud. The bottle now set on the top shelf. Sam had wrapped it in a towel to keep it safe.
                  The rest of the shelves in the shed were filled with the assorted items you get when you pick the houses of those probably now dead. Assorted tools, three large tents and a plethora of other useful items just about filled the available spaces. He planned on filling the cabinets and closets of the house before he was done. He desperately hoped more of his family would arrive. And he wanted to be ready.
                  He came out of his stupor and realized the sun appeared to have leaped across the sky. Sam realized he had been doing this more and more recently, zoning out for sometimes hours at a time. He worried that he was losing his mind, and that he would have one of these fugues at a time that danger was afoot. It was something he would have to worry about later though, he was losing the sun and he had forgotten to secure his little compound. He hadn’t seen any threats yet, but he wanted to always stay ready.
                  By the time he made the long ascent to the tower, it was dark. He fell into the cot and drifted off to the sounds of the red hot chili peppers on one of the mix CDs he had gotten at the house.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
     
    He dreamt that night of being on an island, in the distance he could see figures on the mainland, he could barely make out that they seemed to be beckoning to him, but he couldn’t tell who they were. Over the sound of the sea, he could make out the sounds of a guitar slowly playing and voice singing, when he strained he could just make out the words:
     
     
    ‘Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
the midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry’
     
    As he listened to the voice sing, he realized the mainland was getting