“There, I think that’s it!” Kathy said. The noise the solid hickory bookcase made as they pushed it across the pine floor had been horrendous.
Edith exhaled and slid to the now heavily scratched floor, completely gassed. “My mom would be so pissed to see these marks on her floor,” she said sadly.
“Damn, that thing’s heavy,” said Finley, leaning against the wall. He massaged his lower back and grimaced.
“All the better to keep those things out…” Edith muttered, getting to her feet. “Come on, we need to close all the curtains in every window and get the doors locked. The house is cold because I left the screen porch open last night, like a dumbass.”
“Well, you were kind of saving our lives by warning us,” Kathy mumbled.
Through the bookcase, tarp, and broken window, Edith heard the rumination of the undead continue to grow louder. “Sounds like there’s at least two or three of ‘em on the other side of this window. Come on, we need to hurry—the sun’s rising, and if my guess is right, they’ll warm up enough to start causing trouble soon enough.”
“What do we do first?” asked Kathy, hopping down from the chair.
Edith slung her rifle across her back. She was never going to be without it, even in her own home, ever again.
“Okay,” she said, dusting her hands. “Kathy, you take this side of the house. Pull all the curtains. We’ve got storm shutters for all the windows, but they have to be closed from outside, and it’s a little too busy out there for my likes. Finley,” Edith added, turning to the pilot. “You take that side of the house,” she said, pointing toward the side that faced the barn, the helicopter, and the bulk of the zombies. “I’ll go up front and shut the main door, then get to the gun safe. Once we get downstairs secured, we’ll worry about upstairs and the cellar.”
“Got it,” Kathy said, as she started to walk from the room.
“Hey,” Edith added, “keep low and stay quiet—they’re attracted to light, noise, and movement, remember?”
“Right,” Kathy nodded, dropping down to crawl on hands and knees.
“All the basic instincts…” mused Finley. “Might be able to use that to our advantage at some point.”
“Might have to if we want to survive,” agreed Edith. “Let’s get this place locked up, then get some food. I don’t like the way that cut is bleeding,” she said to Finley. He’d scratched his forearm trying to climb into the window and had smeared blood all over his flight suit from the effort to move the bookcase.
He looked at his torn suit and shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
“Not without modern medicine, you haven’t. I don’t have any antibiotics other than some ointments in the first aid locker. We need to be real careful, guys.” Finley started to reply, but Edith held up her hand. “We can talk about it later—let’s get this place buttoned up first, okay?”
“Agreed,” he replied with a nod.
They split up, crouching or crawling to their assigned areas. The house was so quiet, as Edith crawled on hands and knees to the front door via the living room, she could hear curtains traveling on rings and rods in other parts of the house as the windows were blocked off.
The air was cold and damp in the front room. Edith scurried across the open space and knelt under the big bay window that overlooked the front yard and driveway. She worked her way to the wall between the bay and the front door, then risked a peek out the lower corner of the window. More than a dozen zombies staggered closer and closer to the house. They seemed to be moving with some difficulty—hopefully due to the cold.
It was all she needed to see. She grabbed the corner of the curtain and pulled every so gently to slide the fabric closed. Once the curtain had been closed and the view outside extinguished, she exhaled and felt a little better. A thud outside announced the presence of someone on the front porch.
“Unnnnnh….”
Edith closed her eyes and swallowed. She had a visitor. It was time to rip the band aid off. She stood, took two quick steps to the threshold, grabbed the heavy oak front door, and swung it shut.
The noise outside had stopped. She closed her eyes and imagined the zombie on the porch looking around, trying to find out what had made that noise. Edith’s heart hammered away in her chest and a cold sweat broke out on neck. She opened her eyes, gripped the deadbolt, and turned it ever so slowly, unable to just walk away and leave the main door unlocked. Who knew if the damn things could open doors—she didn’t want to find out the hard way in the middle of the night.
The lock finally engaged with a soft click and the footsteps outside stopped again. A light scratching along the wall indicated where the zombie was—and where it was moving toward: the front door.
Edith took a step back and watched in horror as the doorknob rattled, then turned, ever so slightly. The moaning started again—and the scratching—and the knob turned harder, but when nothing happened, the ghoul on the other side grew restless and moved on.
She released a breath she didn’t remember holding and wiped at her forehead. “Guys,” she warned in a whisper. “Make sure everything’s locked—these things know how to open doors.”
“Oh, perfect! You know, most people start the day with coffee, not with news that makes you want to change your pants…”
Finley’s sarcastic reply brought a twitch to Edith’s mouth. His humor was a bit crass, but it was better than his might-fly-off-the-handle-at-any-moment attitude of the day before. He was the only one that knew how to fly and repair that helicopter outside. Should they need to make an emergency get away, that was the best option.
Her dad’s truck and her mom’s car were still in the garage where she’d kept them after they’d died—and they should work—but flying over the zombies felt a lot safer than driving among them. She reminded herself on her way to her dad’s gun safe in the back of the pantry to go check the cars when they’d finished with the house.
Edith had always thought it odd to keep guns where you store your food, but her mother had explained that most of the meat on their table came from harvesting animals with the weapons kept in the pantry. It made sense. Her parents had never felt the need to hide away their firearms for fear of scaring anyone. To her parents, firearms were tools. Tools that needed to be respected and protected, but best kept where you need them.
Edith walked into the pantry and after a check to make sure she couldn’t be seen from any windows, tugged the pull chain hanging from the ceiling to turn on the single lightbulb. The shelves were just as she’d last seen them, stocked with dried goods, canned goods, and plenty of the basics, like flour, wheat, and canned meats.
In the back corner, rows of glass jars held fruit preserves that Mrs. Glover habitually brought over at the end of every canning season. She always explained it was because she didn’t want the extra to go to waste, but Edith had known for a long time the old lady just wanted to make sure her neighbor didn’t starve. She’d always said Edith was too skinny and needed some “meat on her bones,” so a nice man would take a liking to her.
Edith grinned, thinking about Mrs. Glover clucking to herself as she secretly stocked the shelves in her house, carefully lining up everything on the off chance that someone might come home for a visit. After her parents had died, Edith had been unofficially adopted by the Glovers. Their own children had long ago moved out of state.
Edith clenched her jaw. Now wasn’t the time to get emotional. She waited until her vison cleared and silently promised to go visit the Glover’s as soon as possible. But for now, she had to make sure the house didn’t fall. The creatures outside had to be taken care of one way or the other, and it was high time to split fences or split heads.
The safe swung open on well-oiled hinges after she’d placed her hand to the biometric lock Desmond Martin had paid to have installed. Inside, she found her family history. Her father’s Mossburg 500 and his childhood Marlin .22, the barrels still blued and polished. Her grandfather’s Henry lever action 30-30, and Grandma
Millie’s double-barreled monster she’d inherited from her father. In the back, Edith had added her own contribution, a mirror image of the AR she wore on her back. Ammo boxes, enough for a decade of hunting for each weapon, stood neatly stacked and organized by caliber.
In the slide out drawer on top, she found the matched pair of utilitarian Glocks that Martin had bought her for a fiver year anniversary gift. It had raised several sets of eyebrows at HQ, but the fact that her boss, one of the wealthiest men ont he planet—and certainly one of the busiest—had taken time out to learn not only her interests, but her preferred toys, meant a lot to her.
She dearly hoped to be able to see him again. If the zombies outside were able to kill her little band of survivors, the last best hope for the survival of the species might die with them.
Finley whistled behind her. “That’s a gun safe.”
She sniffed, wiped at her face, and pulled the AR free of the rack. She grabbed two boxes of ammo and two spare mags. Turning to Finley, she handed them over. “Here, take this. You know how to use it?”
He grinned. “Point it at the bad guy and pull the trigger. Even a Marine can use it, right?”
Edith snorted and turned back to grab more ammo. “I’ll get you a couple more boxes of ammo. Let’s head upstairs and get sorted out. If we need more, we can come back.” She grabbed her father’s .22 and box of ammo for Kathy, shut the safe and locked it, then followed Finley to the stairs.
Kathy waited at the bottom, wringing her hands and looking around. “Listen to them all out there...they know we’re in here, they just can’t figure out how to get in…it’s awful...” She pulled her grubby hands apart and covered her ears.
Edith looked down at the weapon in her hands. Maybe Kathy could wait a little while. “Okay. The hallway upstairs only has one window—at the far end. We should be good stashing this stuff in the room at the top of the stairs on the right. Kathy, can you get up there and close the curtains if they’re open?”
The news reporter nodded shakily. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. It worked down here, huh?” she asked, looking around the darkened house. With all the shades drawn and the lights out, the first floor felt gloomy.
“You got it. We’ll follow you up. Once the upstairs windows are sealed up, we can relax for a minute.”
They moved upstairs and repeated the procedure from the ground floor. Kathy hit the first room and moved down the hall, checking each of the other two small bedrooms upstairs. Edith dumped her gear in the spare bedroom at the top fo the stairs, and Finley moved down the rooms on the opposite side of the house. They all met at the master bedroom at the end of the hall.
“That’s it,” Kathy announced, dusting her hands again. “That’s the last of the curtains. We’re sealed up.”
“Nobody can see in or out, now,” Finley added.
“I feel better,” sighed Edith.
“Can I go get us something to eat? I’m starving,” Kathy asked.
“Go for it. I’m going to set up a command center here after I check on the Core and the sample. Just make sure you keep the lights out and the curtains drawn, okay?”
“Will do.”
“I’ll help,” said Finley. “I need some water.”
With the other two back downstairs, Edith moved into her parents’ bedroom and checked on the Core. The little LCD screen proclaimed it was only 7% finished with the file upload.
“How many terabytes is this damn thing?” Edith muttered, peering at the little black box. It was warm—she could feel the heat from a few inches away—but everything looked okay and the network was holding steady. For now. She pursed her lips, wondering how long it would take for the power to fail. She’d have to get the solar system up and running, first priority. She sighed. After they cleared out the zombies.
The little indicator lights on the side panel lit up the room in a soft, sky blue glow. It was soothing, but also worried her. At night, that might be a beacon to the zombies outside. She went to the linen closet and pulled out a few heavy blankets for winter use, then wrapped them up and over the curtain rods above the windows and sealed the light in a little better.
“There,” she said, satisfied. “Now let’s see what’s going on outside...”
She moved back down the hall to her own old room and ignored the detritus of her childhood on the bookshelves, dresser, and nightstand. The posters and pictures of her adolescence welcomed her in silence. She wasn’t there for a social call, though, and moved straight to the curtained window. She blew out her breath, took a deep lungful of air, and pulled back the corner of the lacy curtain.
Outside, the sun had crested the tree line and cast a bright warm light over the world, in stark contrast to the brilliant azure dome of a crisp autumn day. The remaining leaves on the trees didn’t look quite so dull and brown, but retained a bit of their magical orange in the bright light. The grass, almost gray in yesterday’s overcast sky, appeared more vibrant green, especially with the kiss of melted frost.
And then she saw them. Dozens of them, shuffling, staggering, staring up at the sky, bumping into each other. The undead were everywhere. It looked like half of Clarksburg was in her front yard. Edith gasped. “What the hell...?”
One of the ones closest to the house looked up, and she swore the thing stared right at her. A sudden bolt of fear shot down the back of her neck and she stumbled back, dropping the curtain back in place.
She had no way of knowing, of course, if the damn thing had in fact seen her, but just the glance had been enough to scare the daylights out of her. Breathing heavily, she forced herself back to the window. The mangy thing that she feared had spotted her was still right where he was a second before, looking around like he was smelling something, bumping shoulders with the rest of the miscreant undead.
“God...there’s so many of them...”
She took a good survey of the cleared space around the house, then closed the curtain again and rejoined the others in the spare bedroom at the top of the stairs. She’d already started to think of it as their emergency operations center.
“Do I even want to know what it looks like out there?” asked Finley, a water bottle halfway to his lips.
Edith joined them, against the long wall that had been cleared of furniture. She noted as she sat that it was the furthest spot from the window possible in the small room. She groaned and relaxed against the wall, resting her rifle next to her.
“That bad, huh?” asked Kathy. “I found Pop Tarts...” she added, holding up a foil wrapped breakfast bar. “Sorry...I don’t really cook. At all.”
Edith grunted but smiled, took the cardboard-esque pastry and a bottle of water from Finley. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t be caught dead eating one of those things, but she figured without energy to keep moving, she’d be dead if she was caught by one of the things outside. A shudder rippled through her arms. Then she’d be undead…
“So don’t sugar coat it,” Finley persisted. “How bad are we looking? I sneaked a peek,” he said, nodding toward the room’s window, “and there were more out there than last night.”
Edith chewed on her breakfast for a moment, savoring the sugary sweetness. A swig of water washed it down and gave her time to gather her thoughts. “Well,” she said at last, both of them staring at her. “It’s bad. Real bad. There’s a lot more out there now than there were last night. It’s like everyone in town decided to come on over for a visit.”
Kathy looked down. “Oh.”
Finley stared at the far wall. “We’re screwed then, huh?”
Edith looked up from her plate of food and the piece of Pop Tart pinched between her fingers. “I never said that. But we are definitely on thin ice. We need to be careful with our next step.”
“Why…why can’t we just, I don’t know, make a lot of noise or cause a distraction again—like with the chickens—and run to the helicopter?” pleaded Kathy.
“Well, for starters, we’d be trapped inside the helicopter, like we are
inside this house—but there’s a lot less space,” said Finley, his mouth full of food.
“And no bathroom,” added Edith.
Finley grimaced. “Besides,” he said, then took a sip of water. “She won’t fly. Not without me spending a few hours out there in her guts.”
“Why, what happened? It was flying just fine yesterday when we got here…” asked Edith.
He looked down. “Well, I was…I needed something to do yesterday, and I tore open the side hatch…I had to do something with my hands.” He shrugged. “One thing led to another, and now I need a couple hours to put it back together.”
Edith laughed. “Well,” she said, when the other two stared at her, “I guess I didn’t need to worry that you were planning on ditching us and flying away…”
Finley blinked at her, then looked at Kathy, who looked ready to burst. She leaned back and guffawed, wiping at her eyes. Then they were all laughing, the stress, anxiety, and fear all roiling to the surface and exploding out as laughter.
Edith didn’t try to stop herself. It was the zombie apocalypse. She was either going to laugh or cry, but she’d be damned if she rolled over and died.
7
Decision Time
Plum’s house
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Seneca fumbled at the camera controls and panned to the left. In the driveway, four zombies staggered across the yard and the driveway, angling toward the ambulance.
"We got four incoming zekes out there. Let's get everybody inside."
"What's the plan?" Ward called over his shoulder as he pounded up the stairs.
Seneca followed, taking the stairs two at a time. "We only got a quarter tank of gas left in that ambulance. I say we ditch it and take Plum’s battle wagon."
"You're not thinking of bailing on Plum, are you?" Ward asked as they ran through the unfamiliar house and reached the garage.
Elixr Plague (Episode 6): Refugees Page 5