by Mark Tufo
Tracy yelled from the kitchen. “Do you want some breakfast before you go?”
“No time,” I shouted as I turned back to get my rifle; it wouldn’t do to go anywhere without it any more. The old American Express ads moved into my hemisphere of thought. Don’t Leave Home Without It. “Thanks, Karl Malden,” I murmured to myself.
“I made scones,” Tracy teased.
I stopped short, lucky to not twist an ankle with the forces I used to turn around. “What kind?” I asked, hoping beyond hope. (Not the cranberry almond, not the cranberry almond, not the cranberry almond…) My fingers crossed like a third grader’s.
“Blueberry.”
“With glaze?” I asked, my voice tremulous.
She nodded.
“Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air. “I might be able to spare a minute or two,” I said as I closed the front door.
“I thought so,” she answered as she poured a glass of milk.
The meeting was being held in the complex’s clubhouse. It was a sturdy-looking structure, an ‘A’ frame that would probably look much more at home at some alpine setting than here in Aurora, Colorado. I showed up to the meeting twenty minutes late.
“Nice of you to show, Talbot,” Jed said from the dais at the front of the committee room. Everyone present turned to see.
“Um, I got a little detained,” I answered sheepishly.
“What is that on your mustache?” Jed said, straining to get a better look. “Is that blueberry?” he asked incredulously.
I licked it away furiously before he could confirm his suspicions.
“Where is everybody?” I asked trying to change the subject, only realizing too late that I had just made matters worse.
The room was usually standing room only, and that was if we were only going to discuss the mailbox placement. This seemed infinitely more important, and there were dozens of available chairs.
Jed let the blueberries go. His shoulders slumped. “This is all that’s left,” he answered.
I sat down with a thump into one of the many vacancies. “Oh, dear God,” I muttered.
Jed was a crotchety old fart but his community had been turned asunder and he was having a difficult time coming to grips with it. This was the fastidious man who scolded children for sledding on the snow-covered hills, fearing that they might tear up the grass underneath. And now his assembly was reduced in one night to a third of the mass it had been. It had been a shock to him, but the tough old badger was going to make sure the rest of us made it through the turmoil. I was impressed, considering he was prior army. I wouldn’t have thought he had the intestinal fortitude for this. But he had already gone far above any of my expectations. While everyone had been running around like chickens without heads, he had the northern gates shut, guarded, and appropriated an RV from the Millers, who were here and still glowering. He had also somehow got hold of a bus to close off the last gate, all the while assembling a team to go house to house (not garage to garage) to dispatch the enemy. I was amazed, and that offer of a kiss was still valid if he ever decided he wanted it. I had done everything humanly possible to save my family; Jed had thought on a much broader scale.
The first part of the meeting had been a sounding of the bell ceremony for the Little Turtle fallen. I was thankful I had missed that. I had no wish to hear the names of the dead. They were just about to get to the meat of the meeting (sarcasm intended) when I showed up.
Jed continued. “I know it’s going to be difficult to guard so much area.” There was no reason for him to verbalize the reason; there were so few of us now. “We have to keep two people at each of the fenced gates at all times, and I’ll take ideas on how to shore those up. They were never designed to stop a determined pedestrian. No need to worry about the southwest gate. The RV isn’t going anywhere.”
Old man Miller got up to protest. “You didn’t say anything about turning it over on its side when you borrowed it, Jed,” Gerald Miller sneered. “That was mine and the missus’ vacation home!” he yelled as loud as his oxygen tank-fueled lungs would allow.
Jed looked like he was about to blow a gasket. That was the same look that got me going and thrown out of the town meeting a few months earlier.
“Gerry, where exactly are you and the missus planning on going to vacation NOW?” Jed stated, placing the emphasis on ‘now.’
“Well, we could have used it to escape to Florida,” Gerry said dejectedly.
“Oh yeah,” Jed stated sarcastically. “They didn’t hand out ANY flu shots in the retirement capital of the world.”
I had missed the news broadcasts that were still operational. They had decisive evidence that the flu vaccination was the culprit and not voodoo mysticism as many of the more superstitious types (me) had reckoned. At this point, though, what’s the difference. A zombie’s a zombie, I don’t care how it got to the point of wanting to eat my brains, I just wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. Gerry didn’t make any more interjections. He pouted as best he could with an oxygen tube coming out of his nose.
“Okay, now that that matter is closed,” Jed said as he looked straight at Gerry, “I’d like at least four people at the bus gate. I’m worried about the clearance. The zombies that showed up last night showed no inkling that they even noticed there was a way in under the bus. I’d say let’s flip the bus, too.”
Gerry loudly harrumphed.
“But I want it mobile in case we need to get it out of the way quickly, plus we’re going to have cars coming and going all the time,” Jed added with a stern glance in Gerry’s direction.
One of the residents, an older lady with white hair that I always saw walking her Corgi asked, “Why don’t we just seal it up and be done with it?”
I thought she answered haughtily for one that lived so close to the fringes of lower class society. Maybe her rich husband took off with a young floozy and only left her with that ankle biting little pecker Welsh Corgi.
“…Need to…” Jed had brought me back from my little inward detour. “Get supplies and food. And we might need it if we have to leave in a large group in a hurry,” he continued. “Now I know nobody is going to like this part. I want to assemble teams of five to scour all the unoccupied townhomes. This is going to be a lot of work, but we need to figure out where we are at. So grab all the food, gas, weapons, ammo, batteries, whatever you think we can use. Bring it here to the other smaller conference room and we’ll go from there. Also look for a couple of larger stepladders. I want to use those as guard towers.”
I stood up to ask a question. Jed didn’t look happy about it.
“The floor recognizes Michael Talbot,” Jed said, wiping his hand over his brow.
“Jed, fellow survivors,” I started. Some winced at that, maybe because they hadn’t thought of it that way or maybe they just didn’t want to. “I’ve got a couple of questions.”
“We figured that, Talbot, or you wouldn’t have gotten up,” Jed stated sarcastically. I was going to take back my offer to kiss him if he kept this up.
“What’s our stance on interlopers?” Jed had thought of everything but this issue. “I mean,” I continued, “what are we going to do with…” I thought for a second, the word still didn’t sound right when it came out of my mouth. “… refugees?” (This wasn’t Grenada.)
Jed thought for a second. He didn’t want to come to a snap decision. “I guess that’s unavoidable,” Jed stated to no one in particular. “On one hand, it will ease up the load of responsibilities and burdens we will have to bear.”
Miss White Hair with the canine ankle biter spoke out. “Responsibilities? Burdens? Guard duty? I want no part of that,” she said frostily.
Wrong answer, I thought.
Without missing a beat, Jed said, “Mrs. Deneaux, when will you be leaving then?”
Her face lost more color than her hair. Even her dog looked like he had been pistol-whipped. She didn’t respond in any fashion. I took that to mean she was agreeing to Jed’s will.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Deneaux interjected. “I will not open my doors to any strangers, especially if they’re not the right color.”
Mr. Hernandez stood up, angry as all get out. Even Tommy would have been able to tell where this was going.
“Sit down, Don,” Jed said sympathetically to Mr. Hernandez. “Is it really worth arguing with her?”
Mrs. Deneaux glowered. This wasn’t one of those touchy feely moments like in the movies where Mrs. Deneaux reluctantly saw the errors of her ways and eventually accepted a black family into her home as they overcome all obstacles set in their way. She lived as a racist, bigot bitch and she would probably die as a racist, bigot bitch. C’est la vie. Mrs. Deneaux was happy Don hadn’t said anything. She liked it a lot better when they stayed quiet and mowed the lawns.
I sucked in my breath as I watched Mr. Hernandez do his best to control the rage that was threatening to boil over.
Jed didn’t like Mrs. Deneaux any more than anyone else at the meeting. He was probably wondering if she had become this ‘difficult’ before or after her husband left her. Tension mounted, the pressure was palpable. That was, of course, until the nightmare began again. Where someone had dug out an old WWII siren, I don’t know, all I know is that when the siren went off, I got to taste my scone a second time, and believe me it wasn’t better this go around. Most everyone got up, unsure of what we should do next. Eyes invariably shifted to Jed.
“Just hold off until the siren stops and then we should hear some directions,” he stated.
Just how many air raid sirens had this man lived through? The siren cut off as if it was placed under water. Then we heard, faintly at first and then with more vigor as the message passed on from sentry to sentry, “Zombies at the gate, zombies at the gate!”
“You idiots,” Jed mumbled. “Which gate?”
As if in answer to his question, “Northwest and northeast gate, all hands!!”
Gerry, Mrs. Deneaux, and a few of the older folks didn’t move. Hell, I thought darkly, most of them already look like the walking dead, without the walking part. I wanted to pull Jed aside and tell him that we had already been infiltrated, but I somehow didn’t think he’d find the humor in it.
I grabbed Jed’s arm. “Do you want me to go get the boys?” It would delay my arrival by ten minutes but I’d be bringing more firepower with me.
“How many rounds you have for that fancy gun of yours?” he asked, looking down at my M-16.
“Four full clips, so a hundred and twenty rounds,” I said as I began to shuffle my feet. Adrenaline had started to surge, I needed to direct this energy and quickly.
“Ants in your pants, Talbot?” Jed mused. (When was the last time I’d heard that? When I was ten?) “Go to the gate and see how bad the threat is, they’ll either come running when they hear the shots or I’ll have a runner sent.”
I was halfway out the door, when I turned. “Thanks, Jed,” I told him.
“For what?” came his grizzled reply.
“For a chance,” I finished before dashing out the door.
I ran as fast as I could to the northern end of the complex. I knew this wasn’t the proper approach. My slamming heart was going to make it difficult to steady my gun. There was no need for the rush. There were no more than twenty of them, and half of them had been cut down before I got there. I saved my rounds. Well, at least the question of what to do with refugees was answered. The zombies had been chasing a small family, a mother, father, and two kids that didn’t look much past two years old. As we let them past the barriers, relief was imprinted on the father’s face. Fear and worry had corroded the mother’s features. At one time she had been a very attractive lady, but the events of the past night had gnarled everything about her. I felt sorry for her and would have liked to have comforted her, but I was having a difficult time stretching the boundaries of my altruism; I only wanted to get home to my own family. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left with them and I didn’t want to squander one precious moment.
Chapter 8
Journal Entry - 8
* * *
The next few days went by without too many problems. Our numbers swelled by a whopping twenty-one souls. We had hastily erected a six-foot high cinder block wall with mortar over the northeast gate. Some had argued to do the same on the other fenced gate, but Jed had argued back—and rightfully so—if we needed to leave in a hurry, we would need a way to get out. Personally, I didn’t think it was going to matter by that point, but I didn’t want to argue about it. We strengthened the northwest gate by placing two minivans against it. They were parallel to the gate and parked rear hatch to rear hatch. They were close enough to the fence to scratch the paint, but the previous owners weren’t around to complain.
The bus gate was the most difficult of all to bulwark. Obviously we wanted to make it impregnable to the zombies but also mobile enough so that we could leave in an instant. It was our first new resident that came up with the idea. Alex Carbonara, a medium-sized man in his thirties, had been a carpenter in his previous life and was used to finding ways to work around problems. We had mostly left him off the revolving guard duty because his wife had yet to snap out of her catatonic state. There was no way he could safely leave his children at his new home with a non-responsive spouse. So it was in this free time that he had first pondered and then drew the design for his ‘movable wall.’ It was a six…six-and-a-half-foot high by twenty-foot long wall built on wheels and placed on a track. It was ingenious. He placed studs every ten inches as opposed to the standard eighteen for added strength. Covered with drywall and with small wheels attached to the bottom, with some muscle power, the gate could be retracted to either let someone in or out as the case might be.
We were as fearful of ‘gangs’ or desperate mobs as we were of the zombies. Normal humans would have an easy time breaching any of our defenses, so as much as we wanted to cut down on the number of sentries, we just didn’t dare. Every hundred yards or so we had either a tall stepladder or a small sliding ladder set up against the wall. These were manned 24/7. I spent nearly six hours a day on guard duty. I didn’t mind so much at the gates. The camaraderie heralded me back to my days in the Marines Corps. The time on the ladders, however, was excruciating. When I got off the ladder at the end of my shift, my feet and legs throbbed in pain for almost as long as I had been on it. When the opportunity to go on a supply run came, I jumped at it. A chance meeting with zombies seemed much better than the known pain of ‘the ladders’ (modern societies’ newest form of torture). Thank God for Alex, he had already come up with a design for small gun towers to take the place of ‘the ladders.’
The raid was set up specifically to search for food and batteries and that type of stuff, but when Alex came to us with his list of building materials, we promised to make sure to leave room in the van. Who knew what invaluable contraption he was going to come up with next?
Six of us went out in that van. Between all the guns and ammo we carried, I didn’t know how we were going to fit any food in here. Me, Justin, Travis, Brendon, Alex (he left his kids with Jed and his wife), and a slightly built man that barely looked like he could hold up his rifle; Spindler was his name. He said he had been a principal once upon a time in a town called Walpole or something like that. I didn’t like him much, but as long as he helped and didn’t become a liability, he was fine with me. Tracy and Nicole were not thrilled
that we were heading out, but I assured them everything would be fine. We hadn’t seen more than a dozen or so zombies in the last two days.
“Mike, you’ve seen the news,” Tracy pleaded.
And I had, that was all that was on. There were two television stations left and it was ‘All News, All the Time.’ It was horrendous. There was nothing else to report on except for zombies. Even the commentators seemed bored with the subject.
‘Another mass killing in Ohio.’ Yawn, big stretch, the newscaster would state. ‘Film at eleven.’ Stretch. Obviously the yawn and the stretch are figurative, but that was the implied tone. What wasn’t implied, however, was that no matter how seemingly easy we had it at the moment, the worst of it wasn’t over. The zombies were still out there; and wherever they went, havoc, death, and destruction followed.
“Trace,” I consoled, “Lowe’s and Safeway are less than a half mile from here, we’ll be loaded up and back within the hour.” It ended up being a lot longer than an hour and incredibly more dangerous than I had said or figured. And like every Star Trek away team, we ended up losing a crew member.
We left by the minivan exit. It was on the side closest to our destination. Across from the gate, on the other side of the road, was a Jehovah’s Witness hall. I was wondering how many of the devout followers that went to this church were lucky enough to get one of the coveted 144,000 spots in the Promised Land this last week. When I reined in my cynicism, I noticed someone standing at the far edge of the church parking lot. My heart beat a little faster. Why was somebody just standing there? Something didn’t seem right. I told Alex, who was driving, to go into the church lot. He was not happy about any detours; he was thinking that Jed was most likely as good of a babysitter as his near-comatose wife. But when I pointed out what I was looking at, he readily agreed. We were within twenty-five yards and still she didn’t run away or amble towards us. We could tell it was a woman from the slight build and long hair, but beyond that we had no clue.