ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel by Will Lemen Page B

and one thing was for sure, we were definitely in a real zombie world, it didn’t get any more real zombie than this.
    With our list completed, we began to memorize the following rules to avoid being.......
     
    EATEN, DISMEMBERED, DISEASED, SHOT, BITTEN, MUTILATED, or otherwise KILLED, CAPTURED or MURDERED by zombies, normal humans, insane maniacs, or other diverse mentally deranged entities etc.!
     
    1. Watch for eaters (zombies) and rouge humans! Always assume one is near.
    2. Never have less than two (2) guns on your person! Fully loaded!
    3. Always, have a gun within reach, always!
    4. Never, go anywhere alone, anywhere! Ever!
    5. Always, carry a backup weapon, i.e., knife, hatchet, sword, bat, etc., always!
    6. Always, keep a lookout on duty, day and night, all of the time, 24-7!
    7. Never camp out in an open area, unless it is unavoidable, if unavoidable, refer to the first six rules!
    8. Gather as much ammo as possible, check everywhere you go.
    9. Look for and take, as many guns and high capacity magazines as possible, always check!
    10. Take anything you think might be useful in the future, if possible.
    11. Look for food and water all the time!
    12. Learn as much about the enemy (eaters or non-eaters) as possible, and share the information!
    13. Watch your back! Watch everybody’s back!
     
    Of course, there is always an exception to every rule.
    Take rule number 2 for instance, it sounds really nice to always have two fully loaded guns on you at all times.
    However, what if you just got finished dusting off several zombies and you haven't had time to reload, when another one or two undead homicidal cannibalistic maniacs come along with visions of having you for their breakfast, you're certainly not going to take the time to reload before you deal with the new threat unless you have no other choice.
    If your gun is completely empty. Then you might reload by quickly replacing your empty magazine with a full one (provided that your weapon of choice is magazine fed, not a revolver or some such other nonsense), depending on how urgent the need to dispatch the zombies was.
    Alternatively, maybe you would do what they call a "New York reload" and pull out your second gun and blast them back to hell where they belong.
    On the other hand, you could say to the aggressor. Oh, please Mr. Eater, don't bite me yet, wait for me to reload my lethal weapon so I can blow your head clean off! Well you could do that, but I don't recommend it. However, if you do choose to try that option, please let me know how that works out for you.
    As you can see, there seems to be several options that could be used with this scenario. Therefore, we would do our best to adhere to our rules, but we all knew that they were more like strict guidelines rather than set in stone unbreakable rules.
    It took longer than I had expected to float down the tributary to the Mississippi river. I had been there before, but had always got there under power.
    When we did finally enter the mighty Mississippi River, of course the current was much faster, and the river was much wider than the tributary from which we had started.
    Faster was better because we would reach a warmer climate quicker, and wider was also much more desirable because we were farther away from the shore, farther away from zombies, and farther away from people that might want to take our boat, or might just want to kill us, or take our supplies, or all of the above.
    One thing about the Mississippi River we hadn’t counted on, or even considered, even though we had encountered several completely dead bodies floating in the water on our way to the Mississippi.
    Whether we floated or powered our boat down the river, we encountered an enormous number of bodies floating in it, more in some places, less in others. But no matter how you want to look at it, none of us had ever seen such a vast amount of death in one place prior to our journey down the Mississippi River.
    Some of the many bodies