by Steven Pajak
I hoped silently that this was just a passing dusting.
With the cold nipping at my face and drawing tears from my eyes, and fat flakes of snow drifting from a clear blue sky, I made my way down the hill upon which my house sat. Instead of heading to the CP as I originally planned, I turned in the opposite direction, toward our main gate. I wanted to conduct a quick check on our perimeter and gauge the morale of our frontline defenses before I debriefed the council this morning.
Chapter 2
Cold War
The path the snow blowers had cut over the sidewalks reminded me of a snow maze, like the one Jack Torrance failed to navigate successfully at the end of the movie, The Shining, only on a much smaller scale. Snow at least two feet high crowded my knees as I navigated my way toward the main gate to the north.
Seeing the snow like this brought back memories of childhood; digging snow forts and walls of snow from behind which I could launch assaults on my neighbors and friends. Our community was like one big snow fort and anyone outside our walls was the enemy. The difference now is that people didn’t just get a face full of snow; people got dead.
As I made my way down Churchill I could still see the scars of the early days of the war with Providence. Alan Kearny’s front porch was scorched and blackened from soot. Maggie Worth’s front windows were shattered and the wood just below was charred black where a gas bomb had exploded. Maggie’s windows had been boarded up, but the place was empty now—Maggie was a resident of Harper’s Knoll, another casualty in the war.
All along our outer walls, especially the southern portions where much of the early fighting was focused, I could see pockmarks and chipped brick that was left by small arms fire. Two feet of the southeastern portion of the wall was shorn up with two-by-fours. New brick and mortar had been hastily applied to patch the chink in the wall’s armor. Even from this distance I could spot the lighter colored brick and cement that didn’t quite match the original, aged wall.
We had lost a lot of people on both sides in a war where no side could claim victory. Providence had gotten the worst of the punishment, but we also suffered dearly. Although superior in number, Providence could not knock down our walls, although they did try—and some might argue, succeeded—but only briefly. Randall Oaks also had the advantage of defending our community, while the larger Providence had sent its men and women to die needlessly.
The leaders of Providence had relied heavily on what they thought was their greatest advantage: their numbers. Their strategy in the beginning was to send waves of their residents at our walls with the intent to make us cower behind the brick barriers under their superior gunfire. They then intended to breach our gate and flood in, guns blazing, taking no prisoners. Instead, our shooters along the wall picked off their men and women from one hundred yards away, thinning their numbers before they could reach the gates and effectively stopping their advance cold.
Over the following five days they continued to form up and attack in numbers only to be halted by our snipers. They attacked at dawn, at high noon and even at night. They tried to hit us from various directions, at one point even splitting their forces and attacking from the south and west simultaneously, hoping that by forcing us to defend multiple sectors at once they would weaken us, giving them the hole they needed to break through our defenses and breach our walls. But Brian and Kat were ready for Providence at every turn and made them suffer dearly with each attack. And while their forces grew weak and demoralized, our men and women were bolstered by our victories.
However, those celebrated victories were short-lived. Although they had lost many men and women in their first suicidal attacks, the leaders of Providence eventually learned valuable lessons and they exploited our weakness. And it only took one man with a rifle and scope to turn the tides against us. Providence deployed a sniper in the grain tower of the abandoned farm to the south of our gate, giving them high ground and the advantage they needed. Their sniper wreaked havoc on our citizens. With a clear line of sight into the southern portions of our community, the Providence sniper commanded our movement with well-placed shots.
We were prisoners within our own walls. Our movement around the grounds of our community was severely limited and going out to take care of daily business could end in death. We had to quickly change tactics; we tried to give our people the tools they needed to move under the constant threat of the sniper. We trained them to keep moving without pause and to always look for the nearest cover. The days of walking freely down streets were over and our residents were forced to favor dark, out-of-the-way spots to move around. This made defending our home almost impossible.
While their snipers kept us busy, Providence leadership continued to plan their next attack. No longer the haphazard bunch that blindly attacked in large numbers, they began to deploy small squad-sized groups against our defenses. These groups brought new weapons to bear against us: improvised artillery. Using flammable liquids and small containers, Providence began to rain exploding death down over our walls. Molotov’s of various sizes and makes, but each one bringing fire beyond our walls.
At first our fear of fire drove us out into the open. Our walls, which had kept us safe by keeping our enemy out now kept us inside, with fire to consume our flesh. As our men and women tried to put out the flames, Providence snipers engaged us, killing all who tried to fight the fire. We had no good defense against their shooters. Each time their sniper shot, we peppered his location with bullets, wasting precious ammunition and only buying our brothers and sisters minutes to douse the fires before they burned out of control.
Finally having enough, Brian formed a plan to deal with the sniper. It was dangerous and had zero probability of success, but we were tired of sitting around waiting to die. We were tired of being prisoners within our own walls. As Brian laid out the plan to our leaders, each shook their head, realizing it was a suicide mission, but also each knowing that as long as there was a chance it could work it would be worth the sacrifice. In the end it was my decision to make, though.
The plan was for Brian and Bob to lead a team outside the walls. They planned to exit our western border and make a long flanking maneuver across the road to the abandoned farm. Their plan was to burn the grain silo to the ground, eliminating the high ground and rendering the snipers ineffectual. It sounded simple, but we all knew that Providence would keep tight security around their best advantage in this war. They would fight to the last man to protect the grain silo.
Knowing the risks, I ordered Brian and Bob to pick their team and take the objective. I sent them under the cover of night, relying on the dark to move unseen by the sniper. In turn, our patrol would be unable to see any crazies that might be lurking about.
An hour after they scaled our western walls, we heard the first shots. From my front deck I watched through my binoculars as the flames began to consume the tower. At my command, our shooters along the walls opened fire, shooting blindly to the southeast, hoping to create confusion among Providence’s defense and allow our men to escape in the commotion. In the end, the team accomplished their mission, removing Providence’s only advantage in the war and once and for all knocking them out of the fight. But the patrol paid dearly with their lives. Only one man made it back home alive.
Providence did not immediately concede defeat. In one last effort to take what was ours, Providence attacked at first light. They drove a semi tractor-trailer through our front gate, the weak point of our perimeter. Although the driver died under a barrage of small arms fire shortly after breaching our gate, he succeeded in delivering his payload: several squads of raiders. The men and women of Providence exited the trailer with semi-automatic weapons and Molotov’s. We were unprepared for such an attack, but we were well trained and were able to react, and quickly mounted our own counterattack.
With the fate of Bob and Brian unknown, I was down two experienced leaders. I managed to form up a group of forty men and women and created a perimeter defense. I ordered them to
keep the invaders pinned down and authorized the use of as much ammunition as it took to accomplish that mission. In the meantime, I formed up another squad with the intention of flanking the enemy and finishing them off, but Kat requested command of the group. Reluctantly I agreed; another decision that would haunt me whenever I reminisced about the past.
Kat took her makeshift squad of men and woman and led a flanking counterattack that succeeded in pushing back the enemy and eventually killing them down to the last man. In the end, Wesley became an orphan when both Ron and Anna were killed while attacking as part of Kat’s assault team. Kat survived the attack but suffered a severe facial injury. The horrible zigzagging scar she was left with would forever remind me of both the horror and the heroics I witnessed on the battlefield that day.
In the morning, when the sun came up, I watched from my deck as three men approached from across the field under the guise of a white flag. I came forward alone to meet them, not wanting any more of my brothers and sisters to shed blood on our grounds. Frank Senior, Phil, and a man I didn’t know huddled around me. We spoke for several minutes and I learned that Frank Junior, Senior’s son, had been killed during the counterattack. Senior requested that he be allowed to retrieve his son’s body so that he could give him a proper burial.
We did not agree on a peace treaty that would unite our people, nor did we discuss the ethics or morals of our actions. We both simply agreed to a ceasefire to allow each side to claim their wounded and dead. But the gesture behind the ceasefire was not lost on both sides and the Providence-Randall Oaks War ended.
There was a close call two weeks later when tensions mounted and we feared the fires of war would be fanned and ignited. A Providence patrol came too close to our walls and ran into one of our patrols out looking for food. Both patrols were surprised by each other’s appearance and a few shots were exchanged on both sides and each side ended up retreating.
Although I increased interior security upon hearing the after action report, I ordered a strict no-fire policy among the men. No one was to fire a shot unless they had permission from me or Kat. I didn’t want nerves and a hair trigger to be responsible for starting the war again. Nothing became of that encounter and I suspected that Frank Senior gave the incident the benefit of the doubt, as did I, and let it go. We all breathed a sigh of relief and I called off the increased security after the second day.
In November, the Providence roadblocks fell, completely overrun by the crazies. Providence had pulled all of its defenses from exterior roads and outer boundaries and concentrated them further within the community. They burned most of the houses around the vast circumference of their grounds in an effort to create some sort of barrier. At times we could hear the sounds of trucks and tractors and bull-dozers on the cool November wind. I had no idea what they were actually doing there, but I suspected they were digging trenches and blocking main thoroughfares to keep the damned creatures out.
Without the road blocks, our communities were even further divided. By December, the war with Providence was a distant memory and the constant threat from our neighbors was no longer on our minds. With the crazies freely walking the roads, we all had our hands full with new enemies.
Now, on this cold January morning, I shook my head at those bad memories. Kicking up plumes of fine snow with my boots and the vapor of each breath materializing like ghosts, I approached the main gate and watched as Lara Logan emerged from the driver’s side of Alan’s UPS truck. The rear end of the brown vehicle was butted up against our main gate, reinforcing the metal structure that had been smashed in during Providence’s last counter-attack, and closing the gaps that once granted easy access for prying arms and hands to snake hold of our residents.
Although the outer shell of the UPS truck bore scorch marks from fire bombs and the roof was dented about seven inches from a large stone that had been delivered over the wall via slingshot, the truck made an excellent outpost for those on guard duty in this frigid weather. Without fuel they could not start the vehicle and turn on the heater, however, they’d hung quilts and blankets along the interior walls and piled sofa cushions on the bare metal floor, which did a wonderful job of blocking out much of the stinging wind. Besides, the seats were comfortable enough after a long patrol around the community.
Lara carried over her shoulder a Mosin Nagant M44 carbine, one of the few long guns for which we had sufficient surplus ammunition after the war. The Mosin sported a wicked spiked bayonet and with all the wood and steel, the Russian- made carbine was hefty enough to be used as an impact weapon.
Lara’s usually blazing red hair was presently hidden beneath a black wool cap which sported goofy ear flaps. Around her neck she wore a frayed red and black checked scarf that covered the lower half of her sweet freckled face up to the nose. To protect her from the cold—as well as nails and teeth of the things outside the walls—she wore a thick woodland military style jacket and black jeans tucked into a pair of black combat boots. Although petite and cute as a button, Lara exuded a take-no-shit attitude, which made her an excellent choice as Kat’s second-in-command.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, one red eyebrow raised questioningly as we exchanged a quick embrace.
“Is everything okay out here?” I asked.
She pulled the scarf down away from her mouth with one gloved hand and I saw that she was smiling at me. She was very pretty when she smiled.
“Well, boss, I didn’t know you cared so much. It’s a long walk in the cold snow just see if I’m okay.”
“I care about you all,” I said, uncomfortably. My wife had always said I was no good with small talk. I was even worse when it came to flirting…if that’s even what I was doing, I just wasn’t sure.
Sensing my discomfort, Lara’s smile stretched further across her face. “We’re good on the line. I just got back from perimeter patrol and everyone is where they should be.”
“All’s quiet?”
“Except for those damn things out there,” Lara said. Her mouth puckered and her nose wrinkled to show her disgust. “I liked it better when they slept through the night. Now we have to listen to their damn moaning and slobbering 24/7.”
Now that she mentioned it, I suddenly became aware of the crazies outside our walls. I had no idea why they moaned or made other noises. It definitely wasn’t a form of communication; they showed no signs of intelligence—only pure animal instinct to eat to survive.
For the first few weeks after the infection started, the creatures slept through the night, allowing us to be somewhat free to go outside the walls unscathed, provided we kept our noise to a minimum. Apparently, their sleep acted as some sort of hibernation period during the early stages of the infection, allowing their bodies the necessary time for their internal system to mutate and for the disease to take full control. I assumed that it was during this period of sleep that their wounds also healed and tissue regenerated. That period lasted for two or three weeks and now the creatures only seemed to need sleep when they became severely injured. Now, they walked the night and it was no longer safe for us to venture out after dark.
“Maybe some ear plugs might help,” I said jokingly. When she didn’t laugh, I asked, “Hey, you want some coffee?”
Now Lara smirked and asked, “Did you make it?”
“Yep.”
“Pass.”
She shifted the Mosin to her left shoulder and looked up at the sky. Fluffy flakes fell dizzyingly slow from the sky, melting upon impact with our clothing. Her freckled face showed her concern.
“The weather got you worried?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. At last she said, “It looks like we’re going to see a lot of snow soon. These little flakes are already accumulating. And with this wind, that means drifts.”
I nodded, fully understanding her concern. Snow drifts against our east wall had gotten as high as three feet at times, just enough height to allow the inhuman creatures to climb our walls and enter our sa
fe zones. Three weeks ago, when the snow fell at its hardest, Lara had killed two of them who were wandering in Harper’s Knoll cemetery. She’d been alone at the gate when she saw them. She’d engaged them with only two shots and felled both of them. It was a horrifying experience for her, although she would not admit that to anyone.
I know she worried about having to do that again.
“I’ll ask Ray for a weather report. If the snow doesn’t quit we’ll ask Sanchez from grounds to have some of his guys keep a watch on the walls and clear away any drifts that get over a foot.”
“They won’t be happy about that,” Lara said, looking away from the snow for just a moment. “They don’t want to go out there any more than the rest of us.”
“You’ll be there to cover them, right?”
“Yes,” she said, but her face still told me she was worried.
“Then they’ll have nothing to worry about.”
The frown that creased her forehead told me my words were no comfort to her. Like any good leader, she was afraid she’d do something that would jeopardize those under her command. She was afraid at some point her good judgment and sound tactical mind would fail her at the penultimate moment.
Knowing I could say nothing further to assuage her fears, I said, “I have to get over to the CP for debrief. If anything comes up, you come find me, okay?”