by Mark Clodi
Outside of the rooms they backed the cruiser up onto the curb until the rear bumper pressed against one wall, then they backed the tow truck in the same manner on the other side, to form a 'U' with the motel doors in the bottom. Stewart and Tom took the van into town to see if they could scrounge some fresh food, but when they parked the van for the night it would go at the top of the 'U', not quite closing it off. It would make a good defensive area to guard from and provide them with a good field of vision. With Tom and Steward gone that left the others to prepare dinner and get ready for the night, Max fired up the grill while Amelia kept the kids busy inside the motel. There was no fresh meat around, but they had found enormous amounts of canned meat. The kids all seemed to like spam, which drove Max crazy when he thought about it, he always considered it a budge meat that poor people ate, and now it was the delicacy that the kids ate without complaint. The kids and Amelia filed out of the doorway from their prospective rooms, it was about an hour before sunset. The kids were all dressed as if for bed, all wearing shorts with the girls sporting thin t-shirts, Amelia was dressed the same way. They all filed in front of Max and stood staring at him.
“What?” Max asked, the kids all looked towards Amelia.
“There is a pool there Max.” said Amelia pointing to the low pool wall about thirty feet away. Max could see the glimmering water from here, it looked clean.
“Oh no, I don't think that is a good idea.” Max began, but then noticed the affect it had on the kids, “Maybe.” Then he wondered, 'Why not?' and said, “Well okay. But we lock the rooms, leave the windows open and we all take guns. And you have to keep the noise down, so we don't attract any zeds.”
The children nodded as they smiled, Nick and Cory actually gave each other a high five. After opening the windows, gathering the guns and locking the doors the kids made the short trip to the pool with Amelia. The boys, opting to be 'tough' and go barefoot, were hopping on the asphalt, which was still hot, while everyone else just smiled smugly for taking the time to put on flip-flops before making the short walk. Max had gotten over telling Cory to wear shoes, his family must have been very tolerant. Nick was starting to pick up the habit too, despite Max's growing ire. He supposed it didn't matter that much, so long as neither of them cut themselves. In this new age without electricity clean water was hard to come by and the kids needed the pool as much for its cleansing properties as for fun. Just before leaving the safety of the 'U' Max turned off the grill, the spam would wait. When Amelia turned and nodded to him, Max made his way to the pool.
Once there he scanned the surrounding area. He couldn't see much. On the one side the highway rose up and blocked the view, limiting what he could see to less than a quarter mile. Max could see down the road that led past the main office to the main road through town, the road Stewart and Tom should be coming back on, most likely this was where any zeds would show up too. In the opposite direct he could see alongside the highway for quite a long way, the view was one of scrub brush and barbed wire. Satisfied he nodded to the kids who jumped into the pool with delight. They giggled loudly, then caught themselves and went into whisper mode, playing 'Marco Polo' quieter than Max thought possible. Amelia was right in there with them and her thin t-shirt revealed a rather lot more of her than Max was comfortable viewing.
He felt guilty being aroused by the sight of her, Amelia was not flirting with him, not cognizant of her effect on Max at all, she was having innocent fun. Max kept his gaze moving when he looked over the pool area, never stopping to let it linger. 'Sarah is dead less than a week and I can't control myself?' he thought furiously. He knew Sarah didn't care, any more than he would have, but the guilt was unassailable.
The boys went to the deep end and took turns jumping off the diving board, Nick lost his shorts during one fantastic dive, which made everyone laugh. The pool, Max decided, was a good idea after all. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning he saw a zed coming up the road from the street. Only one. He motioned to Amelia, who immediately shushed the kids and scrambled out of the pool. Max moved towards the gate, picking up a baseball bat and leaning the rifle he had been carrying against the white fence next to the gate. Amelia picked up the shotgun and leaned low over the fence, using it to brace the gun.
“I'll go brain it. You cover me, yell if you see any more you don't think I can see.” Max said. During this statement he was forced to look at Amelia, hunched over, near naked and Amelia's face blushed as she realized the condition her thin clothing left her in. Saying nothing else Max slipped out of the gate and headed towards the side of the office to get closer to the zombie without being seen.
Amelia didn't yell and Max glanced back a few times to make certain no other zombies were creeping up along the back side of the pool, he was proud to see Nick was already at the opposite corner with the small twenty-two caliber rifle he had been given. The office corner was all windows, Max could peer through them to see the zombie making its way up the road. He looked for a good long time before he checked his revolver and hefted his bat to go out and meet it. Because the zombie was well down the road, Max paused at the side of the building to make sure no other zombies were waiting around the corner to ambush him and to check for other zombies in areas he could not see before. Nothing else moved, just the one who had spotted Max and was now moving toward him with renewed vigor. Max made himself wait by the corner of the building. Some zombies were uncanny, they would send others of their number ahead to test the defenses and lay in wait to view the outcome, the farther Max moved away from the office, the more anyone watching could see, so he waited.
It wasn't a long wait, it took the slow zombie about two minutes to make the climb up the gentle slope of the road and reach for him. Max faked a frontal attack, which made the zombie, who was Hispanic and about Max's age, clasp his hands together over thin air. With the zombie's arms grasping nothing, Max clubbed it in the side of the head, he felt the familiar give of the thing's skull and he knew it was dead. Again. Still when it went down he hit it twice more, to make absolutely certain the thing wouldn't be getting up again. Then he hauled it into the office, which they had found unlocked when they arrived. He dumped the body on the floor behind the desk and wrapped a phone cord around its legs, something that he thought would take a slow zombie hours to figure out how to remove. His paranoia thus satisfied Max looked out the office windows for any other movement. Seeing nothing he made his way back to the pool.
“See anything else?” Max asked a shivering Amelia. It was still warm out, however there was a slight breeze and that had cooled her off quickly.
She shook her head and said, “No. No other movement.”
“Nick you or Cory see anything?” the boys were also shivering and on the opposite corner from Amelia. The girls had gone to separate sides of the pool and shook their heads before Max asked them.
Cory answered, “No.” The same time as Nick and then both boys said, “Jinx!”, which set them off to laughing.
“Well then, get back to having fun!” The girl's smiles returned immediately and they dropped the clubs back by the pile of towels and jumped in with a quiet laugh.
Tom and Steward found them enjoying themselves like that a half hour later when they pulled in from town. Parking the van corner to corner with the patrol car. Stewart walked over while Tom loosened up a couple of gas cans off the top and started dumping the contents into the wrecker, which used diesel.
“That looks nice!” Stewart commented, eying the pool and the kids playing in it.
“Get your suit on and go in. I'll watch.” said Max.
“I bet you will! Looks like you've been watching Amelia already.” Max flushed and Stewart's voice softened, “Sorry Max, that was out of line. She is a looker though, no harm in that.”
“It's too soon Stewart.”
“Life goes on. No harm in looking.” she repeated.
“Get in, you lame-o, before it gets too dark.”
“You don't have to tell me
twice, but I only will if you take a turn afterwards. You been downwind of yourself lately? Phew!” she said waving her hand in front of her face.
Tom came over as Stewart walking into the pool area behind Max's back, saying “Anyone not wanting to see a naked woman look the other way!”
Max stood still, looking at Tom, who was watching the pool area. “She isn't? Is she?”
“She is. The boys are going to have good dreams tonight. I know I will. A little tummy, but overall in good shape. You going in?” asked Tom. Behind Max he could hear the kids yelling and saying 'Ewwww!' followed by a splash in the pool.
“Not yet, not while Stewart is in the pool.”
“I'll take my turn then.” said Tom, sitting his rifle down against the fence, then dropping two pistols onto a chair, where he started tossing his clothing.
“Find anything in town?”
“Yeah, we did. You have any trouble here?” asked Tom.
“One slow zombie, nothing else. It is really quiet. What did you find?”
“A generator was running at the grocery store, we cleaned out the spam and we got hot dogs and steak to cook up. The dry ice freezer was still good so we filled the back seat with Styrofoam coolers, meat and dry ice. We'll eat good tonight.”
“Steaks? Any bread?”
“Prime cut steaks, corn fed Iowa beef. No bread, sorry, all of the good stuff was gone, we found the meat in back in the deep freeze, the display cases were empty. We did find a pallet of crackers in the back though, brought a couple of boxes.”
“I could kiss you Tom!” said Max.
“Maybe later, I'd rather kiss Stewart or Amelia though, no offense.” Tom finished undressing throwing his underwear on top of the pile.
“None taken. Go clean up. Amelia brought over soap, not sure where it got to, I know the kids didn't use it.”
Tom slipped into the pool without the fan fare of Stewart, after about half an hour, right as the sun was setting Tom got out and took over watching. Max undressed self consciously, trying to decide whether or not to go the full monty, when Stewart yelled at him to quit being a chicken and get in the pool before it was too dark to see. With a quick gesture he disrobed and dove into the water. Once in the safety of the pool being nude wasn't a big deal at all, Stewart kept to the deep end, up to her neck in water, which made Max feel more comfortable. Max did seek out the soap and soon had a lather built up as he cleaned himself off. Amelia sent the boys over to him and he supervised as they scrubbed off. Stewart and Amelia then handled the girls at the opposite corner and soon all seven of them were ready to get out of the pool.
As a general rule the group did not travel at night and tried to stop around an hour or two before sunset to find a place to sleep. It was not as if the zombies were more active at night, only that it was harder to deal with them then, the darkness did not seem to cause the beasts any problem and the living still could not see that well. So by full dark they were all behind the protective barricade in front of the motel room doors. They kept the coolers in the van for now, by consensus they would sort out where to stow the stuff in the morning. The steaks they brought were half thawed and the kids were okay with eating hot dogs instead of spam, even if there were no buns and only crackers to go with them. They did have ketchup and mustard and everyone had their favorite drink to go along with it.
“Do you think there was anyone alive in town?” asked Max.
“No, it looked like it was evacuated. People left in a hurry, but there weren't many bodies lying around.” said Stewart.
Bodies meant zombies who had been killed. A human killed by zombies got up and started eating others. The abandoned towns were something they started coming across this afternoon. Before they had come across plenty of evidence of fighting; burned buildings, corpses of the dead again, blood everywhere, shell casings. Today had been different, it was like there was a concentrated effort to removed the population before the zombies arrived. And arrived they had. Whenever Max and his group stopped there were tracks of thousands of people who had walked around on the shoulders of the road, all heading north east into Nebraska along highway seventy six. The mob of zombies seemed to be well ahead of them, Max was very worried about catching up to them. Sometimes he thought about just sitting tight in one of the small towns along the way, they were behind the zombie horde after all, so they should be safe. This town, for instance seemed like the best bet so far, few zombies, no people, a grocery store with a generator that was working and some food left in it.
“Any zombies?” Max asked.
“A few, none in the grocery store, where we heard the generator. But we had to put down three when we got the gas. Oh, we filled the generator too. It was almost empty. How long do you think it could run on a tank of gas Tom?” Stewart asked.
“I looked it over, it depends on the draw of electricity from what the instructions on the side said, with the highest demand it would last two days, if the tank were filled. With a low draw it could go four, maybe five days. There were a lot of freezers on that line, so I would says it's been closer to two days than four. And it has a manual switch too. Someone had to turn the freezers over to the generator, it didn't happen automatically.”
“We unplugged all the front freezers too, just left the deep freezes on. The engine idled down substantially after we did that. I think we should run by there tomorrow, let the kids stock up on food and drinks and refill the tanks before we go.” said Stewart.
“Yeah, we could use all the good karma we could get.” said Max.
“What's 'Karma'?” asked Jessica.
“It's kind of like luck.” answered Amelia before Max could, “It means that when you do good things for other people, good things will happen to you. And if you do bad things, eventually bad things will happen to you.”
The girl got real quiet for awhile, then said, “We must have all done something really bad then, huh?”
“Oh I don't know, we are still alive, right?” said Amelia.
Chapter 6
Bill was ecstatic, he had reached the solar company and found out his array had reached the trucking hub in Ames, a mere forty minute drive away. The driver had abandoned it and left for Minnesota, which was having some issues with the infected. The hub was dealing with a backlog of abandoned and missing cargo, most of it was due to move on to other states and had just been dumped there when the truckers opted to race to where ever they hung their hats. The dispatcher was in a foul mood that brightened just a little bit when Bill offered to come pick up his package himself.
“It is a huge crate and package, I don't know if you could get it into a regular pickup. And it weighs over five hundred pounds, can your truck handle that? We can boost it up for you, we have a forklift, but how will you get it off the truck?” the dispatcher asked.
“Probably in pieces, if I can't fit it on I will probably take it out of the crate and fit it in where I can. I have a regular bed pickup, with an extended cab I can fill, if I have to.” Bill said.
“Fine, look if you get it out of here I would appreciate it. It is not that big overall, but we are crammed full right now and the yard is littered with trailers, so we can use every bit of space inside the terminal.”
“I will get it, can I come up now?” it was a little after eight in the morning.
“Yeah, I would like it if you did.”
Bill hung up the phone and turned to Trisha, “Mind if I take John awhile?”
Of course she didn't. Before leaving Bill grabbed a blue diesel can he had gotten from his father-in-law a few years back. He didn't have any vehicles that ran on diesel, but he was going to pick up five gallons of it anyway, if he could, along with two cases of motor oil, two packs of light bulbs for each vehicle and new wiper blades. Trisha doled out the money, with an admonishment to spend it wisely. Once on the road the trip up passed quickly, there was nothing unusual until they got into Ames, where they were met by a road block as they exited the highway. Rolling his window down Bill was sur
prised to see it was the Iowa National Guard, not the police, who were stopping people.
“I.D. sir.” the guardsman said, holding out his left hand, his right, Bill noticed was on the butt of his pistol.
Bill handed his ID over and started rummaging through the glove box for his insurance papers, the guardsman waved him off saying, “We are not checking any other papers, we just need identification, this your boy?”
Bill nodded, “Yes, John, get your license out for the man.” John complied and Bill handed it over.
“What is going on sir?” Bill asked.
“Nothing that isn't on the television, we are checking everyone as they get off the highway in the larger cities right now, trying to weed out any infected. You have not seen anything unusual have you Bill? Or John?”
Both answered 'no' and the guardsman continued, “What brings you to Ames? We've had a run on the stores already so if you need food, I mean really need food, you are out of luck right now.”
“No, no we came to get a package from the trucking hub off of east Lincoln. I called them this morning, they are open and said I could come grab it, they didn't mention this at all.” said Bill waving his hand at the soldiers.
“We got called out last night, some people might not know we are out here yet, especially if they don't ride the highways in.”
“I don't know if you are going to get fuel either, gas cans sold out too, everyone is hording already.” said the trooper pointing to Bill's blue gas can.
“Well I thought I would try if I could. Have you, ah, seen any infected yet?”
“Only on my briefing tapes. One thing, if you see someone acting funny. Shoot them. Shoot them first and ask questions later. Do not let them get close to you, what they have is like rabies, they will attack you and try to bite you, if you get bitten you might as well put a bullet in your head to save someone else the trouble. Do you have a gun?”