by J. Rudolph
"You going back to the town?" Drew asked with a smile. I nodded and he grinned. "It's a great place. I know that everything will go perfect. Mom, I love you. Come home soon, okay?" I held him close to me for a moment longer. I rested my chin on his head, marveling over how much he had grown, that my chin was the perfect height to just sit there.
"I love you too baby. I'll be home as soon as I can. I'm probably going to be back before dad will; the guys are going to start on the wall as soon as the first clean-out is done. It shouldn't be long." Drew nodded and gave me an extra squeeze before he went to say bye to his dad.
I watched Lucas and Lacey as they murmured their goodbyes to each other and Tyreese talk to Tanya before he turned to his kids then to his grandkids. To him, it didn't matter that the kids weren't his grandchildren by blood, they were his grandkids all the same. The kids called him Grandpa T, and he beamed at his new name. We slipped out the front door and walked down the side yard to where the cars are. DaWayne ran the gate open while Derek kept watch. He popped off a couple of rounds into the dead that merged too close for comfort as we began to exit. I looked up to where Derek stood in the window. He tipped his hat at me and the pride in his eyes was unmistakable. I nodded back. This was his idea that we were going to make come to life, and that filled me with joy.
We drove down the road and hopped on the various highways to reach our new home. Trent and I were in the lead car while Lucas and Tyreese followed. I watched the land as it rose and fell in rolling hills of brown grass that moved in the wind like a never ending sea. It was easy to let my mind drift as the road stretched on. Abandoned buildings dotted the landscape, like tombstones in a graveyard, monuments to the long passed world. I absently looked for signs of life in these buildings and found nothing, right until I did.
A rather run down building off the highway showed up on the horizon, getting taller as we neared it. Beyond the run down shack, there was a dirt road that extended past the building and disappeared into a valley. As I stared out at this building, writing it off as another ghost filled outpost, a man stepped out on to the dilapidated porch, holding a shotgun in his hands. He just stared back at us, not moving beyond the porch. He was alone, and the house really didn't look like it was anything that someone was trying to live in. Houses that were occupied should have fences, an intact roof, a car. This house was not something someone could survive in during the upcoming winter, not to mention that zombie survival was not a solo project. This man had to be part of something bigger, maybe the first stop watch point, a clever ruse to deter would-be thieves. I pointed him out to Trent, and he glanced over quickly, but didn't slow at all. We didn't want to give the impression that we were scoping him out. Besides, it was obvious by the way he held on to that gun that he was in no position to want visitors, and we knew better than to force his hand. If some strange car showed up at Kristen's, we would fire first then ask questions later. It was that sort of world.
When we arrived at Wilsall, we decided that we needed to set up a home base. The first house we came to was set off of the road and closer to the creek, and we quickly saw the benefits of the location as a starting point. The driveway wound around a bit before the front of the house was totally visible. Closed curtains in the windows made sure that the house's secrets would have to be learned the hard way.
We climbed out of the truck and silently trekked towards the home. The porch was thin and a pair of rocking chairs took up most of the walkway of this one story ranch house. We approached with caution, our guns drawn and our ears listening for any sign of life or reanimation. The door was left open, and the screen door was hanging haphazardly on the bottom hinge. The top hinge was pulled from the door frame, and the screws that once anchored the door to the house were left dangling from the metal, wood shavings still embedded in the twisted teeth.
Tyreese moved quickly to the opposite side of the door as Trent approached the side closest to us. I stood behind Trent keeping my eye out on the front yard, scanning constantly for threats. They both quickly looked inside, with their heads bobbing in and out of the door. It was like watching a cop movie to see them peeking around the corners like that.
Trent readjusted his grip on his gun before taking a deep breath. In a rasping whisper, Trent called inside of the house, "Hello? Anyone inside?" No one answered and there was no movement inside to indicate anything or anyone heard him. I hoped that in the time that passed, any zombies would have long moved on after the food ran out, but there was always that fear that I was wrong.
We entered the house and went room by room, peeking in closets and under the beds, to make sure that it was clear. When we found nothing, we closed the front door and bolted the locks.
I remembered Scipio, when we first came to the house there. I remembered the feeling that washed over me in waves when I was face to face with the proof that we were in an abandoned home, not just some house that was foreclosed on. This place triggered that same feeling. Under a layer of dust, we were watched by the photographs that still hung on the walls. We were intruders in a home that once was loved by a family.
This house had apparently been owned by a middle aged couple with a teenage boy and a preteen daughter. I ran my hand across the glass to remove a layer of grime. The girl smiled through metal braces. She was an awkward thing, thin and stiffly posed. Her self-consciousness was obvious, like the insecurity was painted on over the blue dress she wore. The boy was more confident; his eyes stared into the camera with an almost arrogant smile. The parents were posed behind the kids, their arms wrapped round each other and the other hand resting on the shoulder of the kid in front of them. I wondered if they were nice people. I wondered if they escaped in time or if they were a member of team zombie. My brain jumped tracks and I thought about all the zombies out there that were in various stages of orthodontic work before the apocalypse began. I wondered how long the metal glued to the teeth of the undead would stay attached. I shook my head to try to clear out the images of muscle dangling off of the hardware of braces and broken wires that had to be poking them in the cheeks like a splinter that refused to come out. I stepped away from the picture, and wandered listlessly around the living room. I ran my hand on the back of the love seat that acted as a border in the living room, creating a forced walk-way to the kitchen. Little porcelain figurines sat on shelves of a cabinet in the corner next to the television. Soccer cleats were left discarded in the hall, the mud that clung to it in a game dried to a hardened paste. Each item was a clue into the lives of the people that were. Each was a reminder that we were imposing on a graveyard.
It was a necessary evil, what we were doing. We were alive and we needed to be here. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that we were going to be erasing them, erasing every house of the past. We were going to put everyone's belongings in a pile someplace and riffle through them on an as needed basis. Yes, I was grateful that there were clothes for Drew when he got older, but they were once this boy's. That was the reality of the situation; a necessary evil. It didn't bother me in Scipio, why did it bother me now? I wondered if the dramatic feeling was just from being tired. We were all so tired. I thought about how in Scipio, we were there as a stopping point with no intention of staying put. We weren't going to have to deal with any day to day reminders of the lives that were gone. This was about to be our home, not just a hit and run town. I reminded myself that we were just moving in. This was no different than moving into a new house. When you moved in to a house you saw the wallpaper that was left behind. The wallpaper didn't make the house someone else's, it was just there. Same here. That was what I made myself remember, the things weren't these people nor were they ghosts of them, they were just things.
I turned to the guys, and found them securing the windows by moving tall furniture in front of the openings or placing doors taken from other rooms over the sliding glass. When the last nail was buried into the wood, we were almost ready to start the door to door clearing.
The first order o
f business was to decide what streets we would use as the border of our town. With Trent and I in the cab, and Tyreese and Lucas standing up in the bed of our pickup to find a better view of our surroundings, we drove around to get our bearings. We made several loops around this small place to best figure out where we would have the easiest time building. We stopped the truck after our sixth run around and talked about the best places to mark.
Highway 89, named Elliot in this town, was the main road through town, and Cooper ran parallel to it on the east side of the town. We planned on keeping the main highway intact and accessible via gates, but we also wanted to leave other routes around our town open for travel if we didn't feel secure letting others into our safe zone. When we came to the intersection where Elliot and Cooper crossed one another, Trent stopped the truck and climbed out of the driver's side door. He opened the extended cab door behind him and started to rummage through a few bags that were tossed in the back until he found a can of day glow pink spray paint. He shook the can as he walked to the spot in the road, the small glass marble that agitated the paint clanking loudly in the cylinder. He bent over, and with a snake like hiss of paint, marked the place where they would build a guard house to direct people through the town or to the alternate route of Cooper.
Trent came back to the truck, pulled the shift lever into drive with a clunk, and slowly took off down Elliot. When we found Shannon St, Trent painted a pair of double lines across Elliot to mark where the walls would go. We drove forward, and at First St, he marked the road once again. Elliot was where the life of the town was, and it was on the north end that we saw there were the most opportunities for starting over again. We also realized that this was where many people were probably still at since this was where the medical center was, as well as the bar, the fire department, and the mercantile. They actually had a mercantile. I wondered, with a smirk, if the Olsens from Little House on the Prairie worked there.
From First St, we located Cooper and painted our double lines, then doubled back until First ended at Hannaford. At Hannaford we would take the wall west along Lewis until it met Ordway where we would go south some more. We would have to take the wall off the road here, mostly to preserve housing areas, but not by a whole lot. We all agreed that not one of us would want to see a wall on their street when they walked out the front door.
There was a small school on the southwest side of town that I wanted to make sure was inside our walls so we could use it as a multipurpose building, even if we didn't use it as an actual school. We would be able to use some of the classrooms as storage rooms for the farming we planned on doing there. Next to the school, there was a football field that I could see crops going into nicely. Tanya and Kristen were going to be in love.
From Ordway, we took the wall plans east to School Street and cut across empty space until we hit Shannon. From there, we went east until we were where we started at Elliot. From there, we connected the loop to Cooper by using a dirt road that sat between two large homes. It seemed to be a lot of driving around, but the trip odometer on the truck when we traced the intended wall route said that we were only going to be securing one and a half miles worth of perimeter. This made me excited. I could wrap my mind around that. Now that we had our plan worked out on where we were going to live, we had to make the area worth living in; we had to make sure that the houses were empty. I wasn't worried about the living anymore, with how many times we drove up and down the streets, if this hadn't been a ghost town, someone would have stepped out to challenge us by then.
We started on the southwest side of town, next to the school. Even though we were all certain the houses had no more living people in them, we still made ourselves known at the front door by knocking and calling out for people. There was always that chance that some little old lady was hiding out in her home, too frightened to come to the door. We knocked, listened, and opened the door, being extra careful to not wake the dead with a lot of excess noise. Some doors were locked, and one of the group would shimmy through an open window, almost always a bathroom window. Whoever went in hurried to the front door, and unlocked it, and we went through the house. Sometimes those of us waiting outside heard shots fired before the door was opened, but usually there was nothing. Most of the time, when we found a zombie, it was trapped in a bedroom behind a closed door. It was like they were bit, felt like crap, and went to bed where they died and reanimated. Something as complex as a door knob was a perfect barrier, as impenetrable as Fort Knox.
I was reminded the hard way that not all of the victims were adults, when I opened a bedroom door in one house and came face to face with a young blonde haired girl, not more than eight-years-old. She was still in her pajamas, a pink tank top and polka-dotted pants, and half starved. Her cheek bones jutted out at high angles, her collar bones were prominent, and her arms were skeletal, covered with gray, cracked, leathery skin. She lifted her arms towards me; her bony hands trembled in anticipation. I pulled my long blade from its sheath, choosing to listen to the soft whoosh of metal against leather over the little girl's moans. I lifted the knife high above my head and pushed it through the top of her skull, and the momentum of the swing sunk to the middle of her head and stopped right between her cloudy, sunken eyes. The sound of the sinking blade was similar to the crunch and slurp of a watermelon being dropped on the ground. The little girl sunk to her knees and my blade pulled out of her head with a squelch sound. Her blood was seeping out of the large wound as the carpet wicked it up and spread it out. I sighed. I forced myself to think about how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be to turn this room into a place someone would sleep in. I hated cleaning up zombie blood. It stained like nothing else in this world and had the most rancid odor.
I once left a chunk of ground beef thawing in the sink one morning and went to the store. There was a wildfire burning in the hills close by and the wind shifted, driving it towards my complex. They evacuated my neighborhood and wouldn't let anyone go into the threatened area. It was three days before we could come home. When I opened the door and stepped inside, I thought that I was going to be killed by the smell. The pound and a half of rotting cow smell was embedded in all of the fabrics, including the carpet, the sofas, and the curtains, and I swear in the paint as well. It was days before I didn't want to puke when I walked in the door. That noxious odor was roses compared to the room this little girl was trapped in. I opened the bedroom windows to start the airing out process, but it was going to be a while before the room was acceptable. Definitely the carpet was going to have to be removed.
"I've got a couple of suicides here," Lucas called from the master bedroom. "From the smell of things, they've been here a while."
"I found their kid," I called back. "Turned a while ago, as well."
Trent came into the hallway. "Rest of the house is clear." He surveyed the room behind me and saw the dead mini zombie, then stuck his head in the bedroom behind Lucas. "I'll go get the truck. We'll finish the houses on this street, there are only a couple of more to go, but my brain and nose can't wrap itself around more than that."
I nodded. "Good thing this street only has 14 houses on it. How many have we done? Feels like we must have done a thousand."
Tyreese chuckled. "Hon, we've only done nine. I suggest you start stretching out those muscles, we have a long way to go."
I rolled my eyes dramatically. "On a plus, there have only been a few run-ins. It worries me though, that we haven't seen that many. Didn't that population sign say that there were over 200 people that lived here? We've only run into a dozen or so."
The guys shrugged their shoulders. It didn't make sense to them either.
Trent cleared his throat. "Maybe they evacuated? I don't know. Maybe they gathered together someplace and are stuck there as zombies, and we just haven't been to the right space yet."
"No use standing around speculating on what we haven't seen yet. Let's get going on what needs to be done." Tyreese wore an expression of someone who was trying to
keep focused on the here and now and not allow the future to overwhelm him. It was an excellent example, and I intended to follow it. I went back to the mini zombie, I never said kid zombie anymore, it made me too sad and made the work almost unbearable, and it helped me remember that they were just as dangerous as their full sized counterparts. Tyreese picked up the corpse of the woman while Trent and Lucas carried out the man. We tossed the bodies in the back of the truck, along with the others, like piles of wood. We kept working on the street, content in knowing that if nothing else we had these 14 homes to move into, and we felt like we were on top of the world.
The sun was low in the sky when we finished the last house on Ordway. We drove back to the safe house, but detoured on the way along a dirt path where we piled up the corpses. When we were done with all the buildings, we were going to have to burn the bodies, but we didn't want to do it now. The plan of a single bonfire would make it so we didn't have to smell the God awful smell of cooked decay on more than one occasion and we could better conceal our location from the alive if we weren't sending up frequent smoke signals.
When we pulled into the driveway of the safe house, the sun was just a ribbon of light in the west. Stars were coming out, just a few at first, then many more. The sky was swept in a fuzz, millions of stars from galaxies away saying hello. In the distance, we heard the gurgle of the creek. We closed the door to the house and lit a small fire in the fireplace. By the gentle glow of the fire we ate canned stew and had peaches after.
Every muscle burned from killing zombies and moving dead bodies. I felt it more now that the feeling of hunger was satisfied. I would have traded my left eye for a jar of some menthol laden muscle rub. Trent sat behind me and started to rub my shoulders. I sighed with appreciation for his hands, every once in a while, his hands found a knot. I felt a pop as the bundle of muscle slipped under the pressure of his thumb, and while it hurt to have the knot manipulated, it felt better than letting it be. I leaned into him, and groaned gratefully that he was there; not just as my magical back massager, but as my best friend and love of my life. We all sat in the room together, comfortable in the silence. The log snapped and popped in the fireplace, the fire danced, leaving shifting shadows on the wall behind us. We felt drowsy watching the lights, and decided to call it a night. We unrolled the sleeping bags in the living room after we pushed the furniture away. Despite the discomfort we all felt, no one wanted to sleep on the couches, almost like the ghosts of the past residents of this house would come out and haunt us.