Will To Live (Book 1): The Dead Next Door

by Smith, T. W.

  “You and I have a lot more in common than the apocalypse, Brian.”

  Will went downstairs to his own basement and the office printer.

  Twenty minutes later, he was sitting at the breakfast table preparing to read the first half of Brian’s Manifesto. Written words had always comforted Will, but this bold-type on white copy paper was disconcerting. He was conditioned to reading fictional narratives. Had he read Brian’s words a week earlier, he would have thought them imaginative—treating a science fiction premise with a procedural structure. Epistolary, he remembered from school was writing in the form of entries—journals, letter correspondence, etc. The manifest, being a work-in-progress manual, was similar in style—some chapters only fragmented, reflective bursts; others, polished prose ready for publication. For Will to take it all as gospel would be difficult to say the least.

  Fatigued from last night’s wine, his mind was feuding with belief and doubt, attempting to fuse two worlds—the one of his everyday activities and the one that had rudely interrupted. Before, worries had been common ones—money, property values, retirement… To accept the events of yesterday and begin reading survival guides was surreal, similar to awakening refreshed, and then remembering a life-altering event had occurred—a traumatic injury, or the death of relative. Will’s thoughts kept drifting back, before the bombings, toward everyday normalcy. Yet the events he’d witnessed in media were on a loop in his brain, a constant reminder. He had to keep telling himself that reality as he’d known it had changed. Overnight, the world had somehow shifted. The sooner he accepted this, the sooner he’d find a sliver of peace.

  Brian’s first words were welcome assistance.

  Forward

  Let me start by saying I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would you waste your time writing a manual on how to survive a zombie apocalypse? It will never happen, it’s not in the cards, so why? My answer is simple: I have no choice.

  Years ago, I was diagnosed as bi-polar and obsessive compulsive. My doctor told me that I am the worst case he has ever come across. After hundreds of sessions, he concluded that there was no cure for me, only treatment. So, he keeps me on meds and has taught me ways to cope—the most effective being to write.

  Originally, I told him that I was not a writer and had no interest in being one. He said that that would change once I began, and he was right. Writing now brings me comfort, a way for me to channel pent-up energy from my obsessive thoughts. Getting words on paper is a mental enema for me, purging my brain—like easing pressure in pipes by turning a valve. I have found this to be the best non-medicinal method of relief and I now do it daily. It is preferable to the pills.

  I was not always like this. My condition worsened as I aged (I am currently thirty-seven). It started with small things like cleanliness and order, and then graduated into forms of self-mutilation—like trying to make sure my fingernails and toenails were all the exact same length. Never satisfied that they were even, always trimming just a little bit more. Yeah. You get the picture.

  “What do I write about?” I asked him. Most writers write what they know, he said and then suggested that I choose a subject I enjoyed. I love horror movies—zombies in particular. The whole zombie-apocalypse concept fascinates me. The plots are dire, yet we’re drawn to these stories because they follow the classic archetype of man overcoming unbeatable odds. The situation is hopeless, but challenging and its components couldn’t be any simpler—survive or surrender, eat or be eaten. Human nature dictates we fight for our lives—suicide being the rare exception (and even I, laden with mountains of mental baggage, only see that option as a last resort). I began to wonder: What would I do if it happened right now?

  Man, was Dr. P right. Once home, I was fixated on the question and the words began pouring out of me.

  Writing a couple of pages a day, giving focus to a single obsession by molding and sculpting it into a written piece, helps me function much better than before. I sleep soundly, no longer lying in bed with random thoughts intruding. My concentration has sharpened, staying on subject, anticipating and avoiding frivolous digressions.

  Don’t get me wrong; there are still bad days. Sometimes I fret over word-count, flow, or even the shape of paragraphs. Sometimes the work is so overwhelming that I may read and tweak the same sentence for hours. No matter, it’s the process that holds the obsessive demons at bay. For certain if I skip a day, they will come creeping back.

  The words are for you, Dear Reader, but the process for me. I clean out my brain, achieving peace through daily repetition; you receive the results via the Internet. Do with it what you will. Whether or not you find it interesting or entertaining, I hope it somehow benefits you as much as it does me.

  And as my manifesto grows—like kudzu in the woods, spreading vast, consuming land and trees—I wonder… will it consume me?

  Maybe.

  But it’s better than the alternative.

  Brian Wilkerson

  Will, set the papers down on the table. How many times had he thought: Will my obsessions one day get the better of me? He turned the page and saw the dedication:

  For Dr. James Powers—my Savior.

  The cell phone rang. He went to the bedroom and retrieved it.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he said.

  “I’m south of Richmond about an hour from the North Carolina state line,” Frank said. “I have a little more than a quarter tank of gas. I’ll have to stop sometime—”

  “You sound different. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s weird. There are hardly any cars on the road now. Occasionally, I’ll pass one headed north, and there have been several stalled on the side of the road, but that’s it. It’s very—I don’t know—quiet. What are they saying on TV?”

  “It’s bad. Atlanta is on fire and everything is spreading to the burbs.”

  “Maybe you should just pack. Get the dogs ready and I’ll pick you up.”

  “Where will we go?”

  Frank didn’t have an answer.

  “Do you know where you’re going to get gas?”

  “Yeah. One of my usual stops.”

  “Use your card and do it fast. If you see any of those things just start the pump and get back in the car. You can drive off and put the cap on later if need be.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking that.”

  “Honey, I’m—” He wrestled with word choice, stalling—not wanting to admit vulnerability to his own mental condition. “—worried.”

  The term felt flat, stale.

  “Are you taking your meds?

  “Yeah. But I have to keep finding things to take my mind away. Watching TV is making it worse.”

  “Don’t dwell on it then. What are you doing right now?”

  “I found some guy on the Internet and I’m printing his zombie-apocalypse survival manual.

  “That’s my boy.”

  “It makes me feel better anyway, proactive. Can’t hurt, especially if—”

  The lights went out.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Frank asked.

  “The power just went out.”

  “Well, now you don’t have to worry about the TV.”

  “But what if it doesn’t come back on?”

  “Listen. When we hang up, turn your cell phone off. Don’t turn it on for exactly two hours. I’ll call then. I’ll get gas and I’ll be careful. No sense in wasting your battery.”

  “Pee in a cup. Don’t go in.”

  “I’m already peeing on the side of the road. It’s easier.”

  “Good.”

  “Let me go. Keep reading your thing. Don’t worry.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Frank.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please come home to me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Will ended the call and turned off the phone.

>   The printer!

  He raced down the stairs in near darkness—the basement windows providing a dim gray glow. He gathered the remaining pages of Brian’s Manifesto and returned upstairs to the brighter kitchen.

  All 216 pages were there.

  Reading through the manifesto, his admiration for Brian grew. For someone who had no urge to write, he did it well, the chronology of the piece sound, and easy to follow. His stronghold strategies were straightforward and logical, his insight for potential weapons inspiring. Will checked his watch. He still had an hour before touching base with Frank again. He decided that it would best to go ahead and collect some of the things on one of the checklists before the sun went down and it was too dark to see. He took a flashlight and the dogs followed him to the basement boat-garage where they kept the tools.

  In the darkness, he groped the garage door release cord, pulling it until it clicked and was separated from the automated mechanism. He lifted the door, letting light spill in. The dogs rushed out, excited to be in the fresh air and warm sun. Will figured that they were far enough away from Atlanta to be worried just yet—but he was still tiptoeing that tightrope between real and unreality. He went out to the driveway often to make sure the dogs were OK. Nothing unusual. Peeing, pooping, laying in the sun. Quiet.

  Not having a boat, and the RV being too tall to fit, the only vehicle in there was a riding lawn mower. The garage was neat, spacious, and filled with useful items. Frank was the pack rat and Will the organizer. Before they had moved to Georgia they had flipped several houses—doing most of the labor themselves—amassing quite the collection from Home Depot. Tools, paints, buckets, boards, discarded doors, trim, electrical pieces, PVC pipe, and more filled the garage and the adjoining weight room. He used empty storage crates to collect things and was happy to see that they had all that was on the first of Brian’s checklists.

  He whistled for the dogs. They trotted in, panting, and he motioned them through the interior door, back into the house. Out of habit, he reached for the electric garage door opener. He paused. Hanging next to it and the equally impotent light switch was a nail where the RV keys hung.

  You need to get that thing off the pad and inside the fence while you still can.

  The thought surprised him a little, mainly because he’d been letting Brian dictate the agenda and had been running on autopilot. It felt good to have his own thoughts override with common sense. After all, Brian had no idea they even owned an RV.

  He snatched the keys and went down the driveway, opening both gates wide. He removed the chucks, climbed into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition. It cranked loudly on the second turn, making Will cringe. The Minnie Winnie had been Frank’s baby before they had met and Will had indulged it even though he loathed camping. The size alone intimidated him, and he refused to drive it for similar reasons. He felt it nothing more than a cracker box on wheels, with a closet for a bathroom, harboring bugs, mildew, and God knows what else. It only took two outings for Frank to realize Will would never warm to the camper, but he kept it for sentimental reasons, though they used it less and less. It remained outside the gate collecting spider webs, monolithic—Frank cranking the engine every so often to keep it in good working order.

  Will put the camper in reverse, not using the gas, and it crept backwards slowly, the frame creaking with movement. When he was through the gate, he tapped the gas enough to get it up the remainder of the driveway and close to the garage. He put the brake on, turned off the engine, and got out. As he was replacing the chucks, a voice shouted: “Hey, Will!”

  He looked across the backyard, beyond the fence and found Judy Drinnon waving from her deck. “Hey,” Will shouted back, jogging across the grass.

  Judy and Howard were ten years their senior, but he and Frank had bonded with them fast, playing cards occasionally, going out on their boat, trying new restaurants. They also had dogs in common.

  “What do you make of all this?” Judy asked. She had come down a few steps and Will could see her worried expression, even separated by the two vinyl fences.

  “Doesn’t sound good,” he replied, Romeo to her Juliet.

  “No, it doesn’t. I guess your power is out too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Howard is inside, packing up the dogs. We’re going up to our cabin on Lake Hartwell. Kathy and her fiancé, Greg, are meeting us there. You guys want to go with us?”

  “Sounds like a good plan, but Frank isn’t back from DC yet. He’s on his way now.”

  “You could call him and have him meet us there. And bring the dogs, of course.”

  “Believe me, it’s tempting, but you know him. He’s going to want to get home first. Assess. Get what he needs. Maybe we could load up first thing in the morning though, and then head up there. Bring whatever food we have.…and plenty of toilet paper,” he added, with a grin.

  Judy laughed. “Just arrive safe and bring what you can. That’s all that matters. I see you’re moving the camper in. That’s probably a good idea.”

  “I thought so. Now that I think about it, we could pack a lot into it. Bring it up to Hartwell.”

  “I’ll text you the directions.”

  “OK.”

  She turned to go but stopped. “Will,” she said, turning back. “If we don’t see you— well, you guys take care.”

  The words hit hard. Judy was carefree, her conversation always lighthearted and playful. These words from her lips were weighty, awkward.

  “We will,” he said. “You and Howie do the same.”

  He turned his phone on a little after two o’clock. There were no messages, so he continued reading the manifesto while waiting for Frank’s call. As Brian laid out strategies for fortification, Will reflected on why he and Frank had chosen this house, and was now grateful for its unforeseen advantages.

  They had wanted a ranch with a master bedroom on the main floor, off of the kitchen. They were also looking for a lot of storage space—Frank was an independent sales rep. in the travel industry and his luggage samples were large and abundant—so they’d needed a finished basement with an office and plenty of room. The final stipulation had been a place to park the camper. Frank refused to pay for off-site storage, and most subdivisions these days had covenants prohibiting boats and campers in driveways or even on property. This drove their search further north of Atlanta to Lake Lanier. Neighborhoods on the water were far more lenient when it came to boat and camper storage. As long as they had the recreational vehicle on a concrete pad, they were good to go. Will found this a tad absurd, considering that dense woods surrounding them obscured all but the front of the property anyway… but whatever.

  Before locating a house that fit the bill, they had assumed these three must-haves would be an easy quest. Forty-six houses later, they found the only one that met all criteria. It was a little large for just the two of them, but spot-on for their needs, and their fondness for the floor plan grew more palpable to the real estate agent with every room they entered. The surrounding property was equally vast, wooded and private, rare in the suburban world of cookie-cutter homes with tiny lawns, all equally spaced like headstones in a cemetery. A few weeks later, with Frank’s decorating panache, and the addition of the first of two sizable pooches, the house had warmed and become—cliché all too appropriate—their home.

  Will’s eyes drifted from Frank’s empty lounge chair in the adjacent living room, to the cell phone on the table in front of him. He was seated at the kitchen table, waiting for the phone to ring. His eyes found the paper again and he forced himself to concentrate.

  Brian stressed that boarding the windows and doors was paramount in the early stages, thus reducing the chance of hammering being heard. Silence, he said, is your new best friend. The dead were attracted to sound as well as motion or light. Windows only needed to be boarded as high as a zombie could reach. Interior light would be forbidden after dark, as it would illuminate through and above the boarding.

  He
didn’t have to worry about boarding much at all. Every window on the main floor was higher than anyone could reach with the exception of the front door—which had brick steps leading up to it and two narrow sidelights on either side—and the two windows of the primary garage. Before any boarding commenced, Brian suggested painting all windows black and scratching tiny peepholes in convenient places for observation.

  Will considered this. The only window on the south side of the house was in the master bath (facing Judy and Howard’s home), next to the garage. That window was high enough and diffused, but he would have to board the two ground-level garage windows now, as well as the front door and sidelights. The rest of the front glass he’d paint. The north side and rear were all second floor windows—most with blinds—offering sight of both yards and sparse glimpses of the side street and neighboring houses through foliage. Blinds would suffice there. But he would have to be careful about light after nightfall.

  There was plenty of paint, mostly white-primer, some colors they’d used in different homes, and black and brown spray paint. Will decided that he would paint the windows that needed to be boarded first, and create peepholes in strategic places. He would use the white-primer for this, knowing that above the boards, daylight would illuminate through the lighter paint much better than the black.

  You don’t know everything, Brian.

  Of course, when Frank got there, none of this would be necessary should they choose to leave for Judy and Howard’s cabin. Lake Hartwell was near the South Carolina border, far from urban areas like Atlanta and Greenville and probably a good place to hole-up for a while. But he didn’t want to waste precious time with their own preparations should they decide not to go. The tasks also offered a welcome means of distraction. He would proceed with the garage windows and the front door for now. He could paint the rest of the front windows tomorrow.