by Shane Woods
After dinner, it was suggested that more alcohol be brought out. This is where a stand had to be made. Not only did my stomach turn at the mere thought of drinking again, but there were other reasons.
“We should save the alcohol,” I started, rising to a stand, and was immediately met by several groans. “Look, I know, the world’s gone to shit and it would be immensely easier to drink it all under the table. Alcohol has a shit load of other uses, the one at the front of my mind, mild anesthesia, as well as sanitation. We can drink the beer, but please, save some for me. I love beer.”
This was met with laughter, then, Rob, “What about the cheap gas station stuff?”
“Drink it. Wine, low proof liquor, beer, drink it. Move anything eighty proof or higher up to supply and keep it there,” I instructed. “We need to save what we can, starting right now. That goes for everything. We may have to consider rationing.”
“But we’ve got plenty of food, lots to drink, and all those houses…” Rob stated.
“And the other building,” Chris pitched in.
“And what happens when that runs out?” I asked. “Or when we find more survivors, our numbers increase, or we simply burn through it all living like kings? We scavenge the countryside until, what, we find someone to go to war with, risk our own asses to grab some more short-term foodstuffs?” Come on, people! Think about it!”
The previously upbeat dinner mood dampened a bit, but after a few minutes, general agreement prevailed, and the group fell in with the plan to conserve.
Jennifer got up to head off to bed, bidding Shannon and the others good night. Since working together, the two were already becoming friends, maybe at Shannon’s push, or maybe naturally, but it was good for my wife to have someone female to talk to and pal around with. Honestly, that may just be the thing to keep her from sailing over the edge.
As Jennifer grabbed Gwen to head off to our new quarters, I got up as well. Turning to the group, I commented, “Whatever you do drink, do it in moderation. My work ethic is a fucking beast, and we’ll start our early morning push for wall materials first thing, hangovers or not. Get some rest, people! Good night!”
I left, moving out of the doorway and down the hall, a smile creeping over my face at the sound of a few groans, and a few others bidding each other good night. Tony caught up to me just before I reached my family’s apartment.
“Hey man,” he started, “you doing alright there, buddy?”
“Nah, not at all,” I replied, “but we’ll get there. Lot of fuckin’ work to do here, good time to bury my head in some. You good?”
“Yeah,” he breathed, “I’ll be alright. I just…I don’t know. Fuck it. Have a good night man.”
“Yeah you too,” I replied, then headed into our three-bedroom affair to curl up and go to sleep. I climbed into bed next to Jennifer, Gwen already fast asleep in the next room. I kissed Jennifer, and just held her tight. It seemed like a decade passed, but soon, her soft breaths signaled her to be asleep in my arms, and soon, I followed her into dreamland.
FIFTEEN
The following morning, I awoke a bit before dawn. Shaking the wife awake, I set off to find some form of caffeine, only to find several of our friends, both new and old, gathered around a dining table in an empty apartment down the hall. I walked into the apartment, scratching myself with one hand while rubbing the sleep from my eyes with the other. Somebody had rescued a case of energy drinks from one of the apartments. It wasn’t coffee, but the coffee wasn’t exactly flowing freely yet with no power, and nobody wanted to burn a fire. A fire indoors presented the obvious dangers; outdoors, it would have drawn too much attention.
Just as the sun began to poke itself above the horizon, we set off to work. Five of us pulling security detail, five working on carefully, quietly, removing fencing from nearby houses. Everybody armed to the teeth. We moved a lifted pickup truck over to where we worked so a pair of sentries could provide watch from the higher vantage point.
The day was clear, the sun rising lazily into the sky as it slowly climbed. It was warm, but still not late enough in the year to be torture, as Ohio summers can occasionally be. In my thirty years living here, I’ve seen summers over a hundred degrees, and winters more than ten below.
The fencing began to slowly stack up very nicely. The neat piles lining the sides of the street consisting of everything from solid wood planking, to cheap plastic jobs, to chain link and wrought iron. The plan was to bring it back together and put it up with the weaker stuff sandwiched between stronger material. Privacy and security all in one sloppy package.
Near mid-day, just before we changed shifts, moving sentries to work and workers to provide overwatch, we encountered an issue.
“Hey,” Rich hissed, “stop working, stop moving. I’ve got one down the street here!”
“Can you hit it?” Chris asked, motioning to the lever-action .45-70 rifle I’d loaned Rich.
“Maybe,” Rich replied with a hushed tone. “Wait. Nah there’s more. I’ve got three. Now six. Ah fuck. Ah fuck man, we gotta go. Ah fuck.”
Seeing the sweat beading across his brow as he chanted the vulgarity, I climbed onto one of the oversized tires of the pickup truck and looked with a pair of binoculars.
“Not good man,” I replied, cursing. “Shit there’s at least two dozen now.”
“They’re coming this way,” Henry realized as he came alongside me.
“Yeah,” I said. “This way, inside. Find the fuckin’ attic, we gotta move y’all.”
I motioned to the nearest house, and all ten of us began to move. Dave ran back over by the truck and grabbed two gallon jugs each of ammonia and bleach. We approached the back door, an easy journey since the home’s eight-foot privacy fence was now lain in a neat pile by the road.
Tony breached the door with the crow bar he’d been working with; it opened a bit, the wood splintering, but held fast by a pair of deadbolts. A few strong kicks, and the door gave way, exposing a tidy dining area. We quickly fanned out until a shout from Rob confirmed that the house had an attic, and he had found it. We began moving through the house to his location, flowing into the area like water seeking a low spot.
We could hear the infected approaching already. Scrapes of feet on the street surface, a few coughing barks, some sniffling, grunts and groans. They were a chorus of disgust, and Dave returned to our point of entry and began emptying both jugs of bleach on the back porch as the sounds drew closer.
The first monstrosity appeared, right near our guard post/truck. It arched its neck and inhaled sharply, gathering the scent of ten people sweating in the sun. Christ, it must have smelled like a buffet to them. The freak let out the trademark series of coughs and barks, and more began to appear as Dave added a puddle of ammonia to the bleach from both bottles. He then threw all the jugs onto the wooden decking and booked it back to the rest of us.
Closing and latching the door behind everybody, we moved upstairs. Most stayed out of sight, toward the middle of the attic area. Tony and I stayed near the window to the back of the house and watched. The freaks were swarming the house, from right where we’d entered.
“This is problematic, dude,” Tony declared.
“Nah man, check it out. They’re confused,” I replied.
Sure enough, they got right to the empty bottles, right in the midst of four gallons of chemicals intertwining into a mix, creating a haze of chloramine vapor. There, they’d stop, having lost the scent they were trailing, and start giving out the call of sharp inhalations. In little time at all, they would start clawing their throats, and collapsing into piles on the deck, allowing room for a handful more to spill in and meet the same fate. In just a matter of minutes, there were no more freaks left to tail us.
“Let’s move. We gotta finish them off while they’re down,” Tony ordered, but I held everyone back for just a few minutes.
“No, wait a few minutes,” I stated, motioning out the window. “Wait for the vapor to clear, unless you want t
o nap with them.”
So, we waited. Each minute, every second, feeling like a life time as we watched in apprehension. Nobody sure if they’d get back up, stay down, or what else could happen as we waited for the airspace to free up. Finally, after what I’d calculated to be at least a decade of time, we moved.
Out of the attic we went, and back into the sunshine. The air still smelled faintly of chemicals, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. We set to work on the craniums of the freaks lain about the deck, slumped over chairs, one leaned up against a Char-Broil grill as if she was just relaxing. Working with shovels, spud bars, screwdrivers, and other hand tools, we shut down every skull that still had shape to it.
Moving back to the truck, we waited. Passing around a water jug, we watched and listened. Nothing made noise, nothing moved. After several minutes, we set back to work.
By the end of the day, we had nearly an entire block’s worth of fencing stripped and laid by the road. We had started on the next block alongside the complex, got through two properties’ worth of material, and decided to call it quits. Tony, Rich and I left to go retrieve my pickup truck as the others dragged a landscaping trailer from the driveway we found it in, and got it lined up to hook up to my truck.
Once the trailer was connected, we started working to load the trailer with fencing, and unload it near the apartment complex, laying it in a long line as we went to mark the new fence.
As the sun neared the end of its descent to the horizon, we were calling it a day, and returned back to the apartments for a meal and rehydration.
We explained the events that left us trapped and surrounded in the house across the street, and detailed what saved our bacon, all while Jennifer wrote every note she could down in her notebook, save for the things we’d already learned and recorded.
Once dinner was complete, we all retired to our respective dwellings for some much-needed rest. I spent some time cuddling and talking to little Gwen and took a bird bath with a jug of river water.
As I lay in bed next to my wife, I took note of her short breaths and occasional sniffle. A cry that could be sensed from my perspective more than it could be heard. I looped my arm around her, pulled her in tight, and there we lay until we both eventually found sleep.
SIXTEEN
It took three more days to procure enough material to build a wall we were comfortable with, complete with one single rolling gate. The gate had been found at a nearby auto garage, which had also provided us with a whole lot of sturdy, tall chain-link to reinforce our rapidly growing collection. A second trip to that location provided us with a literal truckload of tools at Henry’s insistence.
Henry found a pair of post hole diggers in two different garages we were working near, and on the third day, he took a team consisting of himself, and three other people and started setting to work. They dug holes at intervals all around the compound, making places to set the fencing into. In addition, he found many bags of concrete in the maintenance area of the complex’s parking garage, and laid those out at intervals as well.
As they labored away at the start of our security system, I gathered up Tony, Dave, and Rich. We armed up, long guns and pistols, with enough ammunition to sustain a ten-minute firefight, and moved to the South Building.
Upon reaching the main front doors, we found the outer pair to be unlocked. We moved in, two of us at all times watching both inside and out of the building. Rich and I found the inner set of doors to be locked tight, not even enough clearance to rattle when the handles were pulled. On the wall between the entrances, there sat a basic card reader, and a large box for an intercom with a series of buttons, each button corresponding to an apartment number.
“Press a button,” I said, shrugging.
Rich pressed a button and waited. Nothing. He pressed another, then another, and still nothing.
“I don’t get it. It looks like it has power. The card reader’s lights are on,” I observed.
“Battery backup?” Tony wondered aloud.
“I got their backup,” Dave declared, bringing his rifle butt-first to stroke the glass from the door. Rich stopped him with an outstretched arm.
“Wait a minute,” he instructed. “I was ready for this, we have the same setup in our building.”
To our three confused faces, he smiled. The cocky little shit smiled! I kind of liked this guy. He then produced a 9-volt battery, a knife, and a length of wire. Within about thirty seconds, he had the card reader broken open, wired up, and, upon touching the leads to the small battery, we all heard a click from the inner set of doors. Dave gave them a pull, and they swung right open.
I couldn’t even think of what to say. I mean, looking at the guy, perpetually unkempt red hair, crooked half-toothed smile, short stature, you wouldn’t expect him to be as outright damned handy as he was. I just shrugged. And returned his smile. It was all I could do.
We moved into the building, fanning out into a close facsimile of combat intervals, Dave watching the rear, and began to move. It was much like clearing the north building had been. The first floor was devoid of all life, and empty of anything made of flesh at all.
Moving up the stairs, we encountered only two freaks, and the remnants of a single body that they’d been sharing. The pile of gore nothing more than a pile of jelly and discarded bones, though its odor was still very prevalent, permeating the entire floor with a putrid stench of rot and decay. The freaks sharing the meal didn’t even see or hear us, and they were quickly dispatched with a pair of shots let loose by Tony and Rich, adding their own package of nastiness to the scene.
We moved on and found much the same as before on each floor. One floor would be empty, another occupied, and the most we had found in the entire complex was on the top floor. Upon opening the door to Floor Nine, we were immediately greeted by a female who had clearly seen better days.
At first, she just kind of stared, almost as if perplexed. We stared back, for just a moment. Did she see us? Smell us? What was she doing?
Then the freak made her intentions clear. All at once, it was as if the realization of what was happening hit her. She dropped her jaw as if on a hinge, and let out an ear-splitting shriek, that, at this range, seemed to fill the entire world and permeate every part of my being.
At the very tail-end of her oration, we heard a loud gurgling, as if she’d just eaten an entire batch of atomic wings and found out too late that they didn’t agree with her. Following the grotesque series of noises, you could almost see her throat expand as a blob of the vomit I’d seen many times before began making its way up from her digestive tract.
Rich was the first to move, raising the hand with his small .32 revolver, and sending one of the small-caliber rounds straight through the thing’s forehead. She fell over flat backwards, almost as if she were in a cartoon, and as her back struck the floor of the hallway an eruption of dark crimson left her parted lips. The sick soup rose a solid five feet into the air, and then came crashing back down like the world’s most disgusting geyser.
The scene departed our line of sight and revealed three more monstrosities running to our location from the other end of the hallway. At that moment, we were all spurred into action, and at once, we unleashed a mad minute of directed fire into the forms. Rounds ripped through clothing and flesh alike, painting the walls, floors, and ceiling. Rounds missing their target torn into walls, exploding plaster, and hole-punched the door at the other end of the hallway.
At the end of our firing session, we reloaded, stinging fingers from negligently touching warm gun parts, and coughing from the smoke screen we had built up. Not one freak moved. Nothing moved. Silence once again took over the floor. After a few minutes, we started moving, but we had barely touched the door of the first apartment when Henry’s bellowing voice called from behind us.
“Friendlies!” he called. “We heard shooting, everyone alright?”
I started to reply but was cut short by a muffled shout from the other end of the hallway.
“Hold position!” I shouted down, motioning for my friends to be prepared. “Don’t move, we are coming to you!”
We moved rapidly down the hallway, a centipede of legs with porcupine quills of gun barrels sweeping through every open doorway and covering every corner and recess. In short order we reached the door to the last apartment.
The door was the same basic steel entry door with a peephole that you see in apartments and hotels worldwide. What was different was the collage of dents, dings, scratches, and scrapes marring the entire surface of the door.
Approaching it, I called out, “Hello? Friendlies here. Who’s there?”
The clicking of locks and scraping of furniture followed, and soon the door swung open exposing a family of four. The husband, a short, well-built man, made the first introduction.
“God we’re glad to see you! I’m Frank,” he declared, shaking hands. “This is my wife, Clara, and our kids, Robbie and Tanya.” He informed us this, motioning to a short, very thin brunette with deep set eyes, and a pair of very scared looking children, both near the age of ten.
“Y’all been here since the start?” I asked, and he nodded, so I continued, “Any guns? Drug issues? Anything we need to know about you? How about health conditions?”
He shook his head in the negative to each of these, except the last one, “I’ve got a bad back, but I don’t let it slow me down. My wife… she’s prediabetic, but it’s controllable with diet. We were trapped in here by those things.”
“Get them some food and water,” I said to Dave and Tony, who set to preparing the only MRE’s they brought, one from each man, and handed out a couple of bottles of water.
“Are you the military?” Clara asked.