They blew a few more kisses to the audience, heard the catcalls that were expected at such gatherings of the newly betrothed, and entered the bridal suite.
Fifteen minutes later, the candles in the room were blown out, leaving the newly married couple in the dark.
The audience below applauded the beginning of the marriage night, especially the men who had received a most respectful kiss from the very beautiful bride.
#
Aiden and Marlaina spent a full week of honeymoon bliss inside the bridal tower. Food was hauled up several times a day in the arming basket that was used mostly for arrows during safe house battles. The newly weds were fatigued as were most of the survivors at the safe house.
The entire community was resting up from killing so many of the walking dead inside the safe house's zombie containment corrals. Many of these terminated zombies were escapees from the bigger cities coming from as far away as Philly and New York. The New Jersey Shore also fathered many of the newest zombie visitors. They, too, walked hundreds of miles in search of human flesh.
"The safe house is under attack too much. We need a safer and more isolated refuge or we are going to eventually be wiped out in a single attack. The zombies are going to kill us here same as they did when they over ran Lancaster. We need to explore the lands far away from here for a better fortress than this. I want to survey the far away places in Pennsylvania. There's got to be a better and safer place for us in an area the zombies cannot reach." Marlaina told Aiden.
"Why?"
"For one thing, Aiden, this safe house is too close to the road, that's why. The zombies just follow the highway, and it takes them right here. We need a refuge that is difficult to reach, something that is at least several steep mountains and rivers from the roads. It should be a place where natural impediments keep every zombie from finding us and reaching us. Otherwise, we will be overrun daily just as we have been here. This has become a strategically bad place for us to be."
"I'll speak to my Uncle about it," Aiden said. "I know he loves this place, but I have hunch he has to have arrived at the same conclusion on his own already. He's a military person, you know. Strategic position has to be one of his strong points."
"Might be a tough sell."
"Might be."
"If we take out on our own, we can do a Lewis and Clark expedition for a hundred miles and more, take notes, and report back as to places that would hide us from the walking dead. It'd be nice not to have them just walking in on us every day of the week."
"Right."
"It's very tiring."
"Scares the shit out of me," Aiden said. "Zombies are nothing but a constant threat here. I have nightmares of being bitten as I sleep. These dark dreams sometimes involve you being bitten and how I have to club you to death. It's very disturbing. I don't want that. Moving might end our security issues once and for all."
"Imagine a place where they couldn't approach us. Just a simple river with some depth would stop them, steep mountains would block them. We could build traps set out to lure them and detain them. We could use fences that would funnel them into a small area where they would be naturally corralled with no means of escape until we could come out at our leisure and club them to death."
"We might gain on them that way. That's for sure."
"I don't want our children coming into a world like this," Marlaina said.
"I feel the same way. It is not safe for children here."
"Exactly. In fact, because of the burgeoning dangers of this place, I have conflicting thoughts about kids."
"Same with me. I have doubts, but I really do want children. We need a lot of kids for all mankind to have even a small chance to survive inside this wicked zombie hell we live in."
"Of course."
"The human race deserves to survive this plague," Aiden said. "I hate to be repetitive, but I plan on doing my part. But it's up to you. What part I play in having them is far less than what you will endure to make them happen."
"Any children we have will be beautiful, Mr. Wilson," Marlaina Wilson said. She liked the sound of it. She had always wanted to marry Aiden Wilson and take his name. She kissed him. "It's not gloom and doom," she told him. "The glass is half full. We are going to have those children, and we are going to give them a good life. No matter what, in time, these zombies will all die out. They can only reproduce by killing us to make more of them. We can stop that in a safer place where they can't even find us. If we find such a place, we will win. They will lose."
Aiden knew Marlaina was correct. They'd discussed this on many occasions. All they had to do was survive. That way the zombies would eventually disappear. All human survivors had to do was not let themselves become zombie meals, and if anyone did get bitten, to get rid of them immediately so they couldn't resurrect as mankind's greatest enemy, the walking dead.
"With a better position and plan, we are bound to win," Aiden said. "All we need to do is to keep them from biting any of us and being certain we kill all of those who get bitten anyway, despite our best planning and skill. We've already cut their inroads into our population a hundred times better than we did on that first day at school when they attacked us by surprise and killed so many of our friends. The problem then was we didn't even know who they were and what was happening. We didn't even know to make sure our dead were really dead and couldn't come back as zombies like them. We are way ahead in the game now from where we were the first few weeks."
They saw several zombies staggering out of the woods.
"Zombies!" Aiden screamed.
Marlaina grabbed one of several bows and shot an arrow into two of them.
"Hit!”
“Hit!”
Three others were still walking. Several citizens emerged from the house with bats and finished off the stumblers.
"Clear!"
"Clear! Clear!"
Soon, the excitement was over.
"We need a new place to live," Marlaina said. “That's all there is to it.”
"We'll both talk to Uncle John about it."
"If he doesn't agree, we need to do it on our own. We can't survive long enough here."
"It's done," Aiden said.
They went back into the bridal suite and made love. After all, this was their moment. They needed to normalize it at least for the first week.
It might be the only chance they were ever going to have to be in love...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lewis & Clarking
Aiden and Marlaina walked along the highway, searching for better places to move the safe house. John Wilson liked the idea, but he didn't want to lose two of his best fighters.
"Only if you promise to return and not get your fool selves killed," John told them. "I need you. You know I am very close to you."
"We have survived so far," Marlaina said.
"I promise. We'll be back."
"Girl Scouts honor, Uncle John," she said. She winked at him.
He couldn't stand to lose anyone else. These two were like his own kids. He had lost too much in the way of human assets in the past. Even for a soldier, there was a limit to how much collateral damage a man could handle.
The couple proceeded along the road side by side, covering the points at front, back and sides, constantly vigilant of any potential zombies who might stumble upon them. Within several hours they had not been accosted even once. To Aiden and Marlaina that meant one thing. They were way overdue. Sure enough, in a few minutes fifteen walking dead appeared on their left. The droolers had been walking slowly through the woods looking for humans. Their familiar zombie stagger was unmistakable. Their zombie arms floated outstretched in front of them. Their disgusting zombie death stench rolled out of the woods toward them. This meant the wind was coming from the zombies, so they were not aware of Aiden and Marlaina walking close by.
"Let's cut them off up ahead, while they are still up wind from us,” Marlaina told Aiden. “If we are lucky, they will pass us unawares, and we might be abl
e to club them before they find out we are behind them."
Aiden knew a good military strategy when he heard it, and Marlaina's idea was a good one. So they walked rapidly ahead at twice the speed of the biters and hid themselves by a crook in the forest where they waited. They reached this point three minutes before the zombie's slower funeral march. They couldn't resist a few kisses while they waited. The biters stumbled past them, and the pair soon began dispatching them with their baseball bats. The back of their brittle zombie heads caved in one by one.
In two minutes, they were stomping their skulls into the ground and yelling the familiar strain of, "Clear! Clear!"
Then, it was over.
The entire little zombie cluster was dead. No resurrection was possible. Their heads were shattered beyond any point of return. The cluster was finished for good.
"Pretty darned nifty, dude!" Marlaina said.
They slapped hands in the air and laughed. It had been a piece of cake.
"We're good," Aiden said.
"Yes, we are."
They assembled a pyre in a safe spot. Working hand in hand, they carefully piled on the extremely combustible bodies of the dead who were as dry as kindling, and set them afire. Soon, they were totally burnt. They shoveled dirt to extinguish the pyre and prevent the fire from spreading into the woods. Then, they continued down the highway. A nearly grown puppy romped out of the woods in their direction. He had evidently been stalking the zombies as a means of keeping himself safe from them. He seemed inquisitive and harmless, but Aiden wasn't sure. He held his baseball bat at the ready just in case.
"Let me talk him in," Marlaina said. "If he doesn't respond to my voice we can assume he's infected. If he does respond then he's still unbitten and he's probably okay."
"Sounds logical."
"Come here, sweetie!" Marlaina coaxed the mutt. "Come on, puppy!"
The dog's ears relaxed totally, and he rolled over and showed his stomach.
"Come on, baby!"
The dog crawled toward her, whining and wagging it's tail.
"He's okay," Marlaina said. "He just needs a friend is all."
The dog made his way to her, and he allowed her to touch him. She petted his head. It was soft and smooth. He was a yellow retriever, probably the last of his brood.
"Want to be friends, little guy?"
He whimpered and showed her his stomach, which was universal dog talk for “I'm not going to bite. See, here's my stomach. You can kill me now, and I won't even defend my self."
"Nice little doggy!" she said.
"What are you doing?" Aiden asked. "We can't take a dog with us."
"Why not?"
"He'll give us away with his barking."
"Wrong," Marlaina said. "He won't bark. He's been hounded by zombies long enough to understand that being quiet is his best way to survive. Every time he barks, he knows they turn and come after him. He's got to know that. Otherwise, he'd have become softened zombie food long ago. Besides, he hasn't barked once. So, he's figured out being quiet is protective."
"He'll hold us back, Marlaina."
"Au contraire," she said. "He'll be the biggest help we've ever had."
"How do you figure?"
"His little doggy nose. He'll smell zombies miles away. He'll be able to trail them so we can kill them from behind. We just need to calm him down and train him to stay quiet, unless he barks to draw zombies away from us."
Aiden had never thought of this. Marlaina had developed in her mind a true revelation, which if it worked out, would be useful to herself and to all other groups of survivors. A group of dogs could be extremely valuable, increasing their security, allowing them to sleep without having one eye open all night long and surrounding and harassing the walkers, driving them to total distraction and extreme fatigue.
"I bet they can drive these guys nuts if they bark at them and pretend to attack them over and over."
"Collies can move sheep anywhere they want them to go. I think this guy and some of his friends might do exactly the same thing to these biters. They won't be able to grab him, because he'll know not to let them. He can smell how dead they are so he won't ever see them as food. That means he'll stay clear."
#
Marlaina was good with dogs. She knew how their little minds worked. She could gain their loyalty.
"I worked at a vet's place several summers. Remember?"
"Yes, but that was a few years ago."
"It's like riding bikes. You never forget."
She named the dog Yellow which seemed a bit stupid to them both, but it was easy, required no mental ingenuity, and it worked well. Yellow took to Marlaina like a duck takes to water. Soon, we was following hand signals and sitting, healing, retrieving, and remaining totally still and silent as death when ordered. Yellow was attentive, wanting to do exactly what she asked. "Dogs have a herd mentality," Marlaina told Aiden. "They will find a leader and follow him all the way into hell. That's what makes dogs so unique. Friends for life, buddy," she told him. "Just like you and me. He'll love us the same way, because he knows that's what we want from him. You'll see." She was right. Soon Yellow loved him as much as he did Marlaina. They were buds all the way. Aiden started loving Yellow in return. He was all right. Friendly, obedient, and charming. He'd die for both of them in a Lancaster minute.
One day, she trained him to herd zombies into a tight circle. Within minutes, Yellow had it all figured it out. Yellow barked at their feet and ran in circles until they were so afraid of him they bunched up and covered their faces. All Marlaina had to do was slam them with her clubs, crushing their brains apart. Then, when they fell unconscious on the forest floor, both Marlaina and Aiden stomped their skulls flat with their boots.
"You are right," Aiden said. "I had no idea about how helpful dogs could be to our survival efforts."
"I didn't either," she said. "But it came to me the moment I saw him. I figured he'd been tracking those walkers. He knew to stay away. I think they were walking away from him. They were most likely afraid of him, especially the way he badgered them. Besides, zombies have trouble bending down to the ground where this little guy lives and bites. They'd have almost no way of grabbing him with their awkward hands. He might have been barking at them earlier until they did what he wanted and walked away from him. He followed at a close distance and pretended to attack them to keep them walking away from him. That was when I knew how useful he could be to us."
"Sweet."
"It's a win. We are not exploiting him. If anything, he is training us in how to best use him, because he needs to have a living leader in order to feel like a real dog. He probably tried making friends with the walkers and soon discovered what a mistake that idea was. He's lucky they didn't break his neck, and eat him."
The thought of walkers killing domestic pets and eating them was repugnant to them both. Soon, they had several new dogs learning to help them round up and remove zombies from their area. In addition, the dogs helped to hunt up rabbits which they trapped and shot with arrows. Of course, they shared their meat with their dogs. Along the way, as they trained their dogs, they found farms littered with corpses of zombies and animals. Occasionally they found cattle including goats, sheep, horses, and Angus. Soon, they had learned to herd them along the street. Using saddles they found in barns, they began riding their abandoned horses, nearly all of whom were already broken for such. This increased their range of movement allowing them to explore more and more territory for a new and safer home for their people.
"I never knew the way humans used animals for their benefit like I do now," Aiden said.
"Me, neither. I never knew it. We have both learned something very valuable together. This is an entirely new and useful insight, Aiden."
Soon the dogs learned to bark in different ways to signal if an animal they were tracking was alive or was infected with the plague. Such a bark was extremely beneficial, because it allowed them to stand clear of the four-footed dead who carried t
he Amish infection to humans just as well as did the walkers. Along the way, they rounded up and killed more than four hundred of the walking dead according to the records they kept as they explored the area ahead in search of a new home for their people. They placed the number of the dead in their logs using the highway mile marker. This allowed them to see how populated each area was with these walking dead. They also found which areas were devoid of them, but since the zombies were travelers, these areas could change numbers at a moment's notice as more of them came and left. Later, they would be able to determine even more about their habits and use that knowledge to exterminate them once and for all. It was theoretically possible to kill out the plague by clubbing and cremating all of them so that none of the virus survived on the earth in future times. This was a pleasing and sobering thought. It might eventually make it possible to return the planet to sanity.
Eighty miles from the safe house they found a series of jagged walled mountains locked in behind deep valleys, streams, and hillsides. These mountains were so steep that no zombie would ever attempt to climb them. They carefully surveyed these locked in hideaways. Finding no walkers for miles, they soon determined that they had found a myriad of hidden places where they could find peace and safety from the zombie killers. The steep mountainsides which zombies could not climb had a abundance of wildlife as well as nuts, root plants, wild carrots, and other vegetables the people could eat. More than this, these lands would support tons of beets, carrots, and other rooted plants. If these wild species of human food could grow in the wild here, then it was logical that the larger and more productive heritage plants would thrive just as well if not better in the same soil. They soon built fences, barns, and cabins in the protected and more gentle hillsides using the primitive tools they had harvested from the hundreds of abandoned farms they had passed. In the future, when they returned here with their safe house families, they could cadaver barns and homes for lumber, nails, and hinges to build even grander structures. Soon, they had slowly and safely hauled their cattle up the mountains using horses and ropes to secure them from falling back down the steep sides and sequestered their animals safely on the land, making certain they would not get out. They split up the dogs and left six of them to attend the small herd and protect them. Then, they took off to hook up with their people and lead them to this safely sequestered place where they would never again see a single wandering zombie stumbling upon them.
The Zombies of Lancaster Page 19