It was a little after nine when I got back and I was dead tired. I don’t know if was the sudden spike in adrenaline from the fight, but I wanted nothing more than to sleep. Sleep would have to wait, there was a fence to be built and planning to be done. We had two more days of planning and preparation and then we were going shopping.
CHAPTER 3
I waved to Jason on the roof, and walked inside. As soon as I entered the house I saw Hannah. “He’s back!” she yelled to the rest of the house.
People started emerging from different rooms and crowded around me while I unloaded the backpack filled with meds and batteries.
“So what happened?” asked Liz.
As I pulled out item after item, handing the coloring and puzzle books to Michelle, who whispered a quick thanks before running off. I told them all what happened in the store, for the most part anyway. I conveniently left out the part where I came in close contact with the last zombie. I didn’t want to upset anyone, but I could tell some of them knew I was leaving something out.
After the supplies was put away, I ate what was left of that day's breakfast and headed out to work on the fence with everyone else. After several hours we had extended the fence to the south side of the house. The hardest part of putting up the fence so far was the large clay hill that was on the southern side of the backyard. There were no trees to nail the plywood or fencing too. We had to dig holes and place two-by-fours in them, securing them with some quick drying concrete left over from another fencing project. The clay's integrity was subject to the weather, too wet or too dry and it would slide or crumble, making it the weakest part of the fence by far. We’d have to think of a better idea in the long run.
I was sitting in the shade of the pole barn when Sarah appeared and sat down next to me. We sat there for a minute before she said, “Whoa, you stink.”
“Gee, thanks,” I replied.
“So, you have a plan for the raid or are we just going to wing it?”
“Well, I was working on it until I was so rudely interrupted,” I smiled.
“Oh, is that what you were doing? Because it looked like you were slacking off and staring off into space.”
“Slacking off!” I said with mock indignation, “Why do you think I stink so much because I was napping all day? And I wasn’t staring off into space, that’s my thinking face.”
“You’re thinking face, huh?” she said raising an eyebrow.
“Ok, fine, so I was staring into space. But I really was thinking about a plan,” I admitted.
“Yeah, ok. Whatever you say,” she said, smiling and standing up.
“Don’t you whatever me woman,” I said sarcastically.
She laughed and walked away and I heard the whisper of a “Whatever,” as she left.
“I heard that!” I yelled after her. I heard her laugh again and I smiled.
I spent the rest of the afternoon resting and reworking the plan for the market we would hit in two days. Originally I was going to have the cars circle the area. Instead, I would have them back up to the door to make loading easier.
Having the cars parked would allow at least two more individuals to help gather supplies while the other two could keep guard at the front. We would start with the canned food, working our way through the preserved food, and then down to any of the unspoiled fresh food. I decided that the group going on the raid with me would be, Jason, Matt, Justin, Hannah, Jessica, Christina, and Carrie. I wanted Thomas, my sniper, to stay at the house and keep guard. Once I announced who would be going Sarah had something to say.
“I’m not staying here,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Well, I figured…” I started, glancing at Michelle.
Sarah followed my eyes, looked back at me and said, “She’ll be fine. And besides, you said this would be easy.”
“Okay. Then it’ll be me, Jason, Matt, Justin. Hannah, Jessica, Christina, and Sarah,” I looked around the room, “Agreed?” Carrie had no qualms about staying out of the raid.
That night I took my turn walking the roof and then went to bed, my mind nearly too busy to sleep. The next day, after breakfast I went out to the pole barn and dug through some of the junk. I found an old radio that ran on D batteries. I took it inside, changed the batteries and searched for a signal. Nothing but static. “Hmmm,” I mumbled. It could mean that this was just an old radio and that it didn’t work, or it could mean that everything was off the air.
Officially, it had been only five days since I had first seen the news of the outbreak. It was now Wednesday, and tomorrow we would conduct the raid. Knowing that Astoria and the surrounding area was powered by coal plants, I figured that the power could go any day.
When I woke up the power was out. I set about waking up all the guys around me and then headed to the girl's wing. I made sure everyone was armed once they were all awake and had eaten a hurried breakfast. We would be in close quarters, so the rifles would be left at home. We would take the four shotguns, two handguns, and my bow. Christina opted out of taking a weapon. I tried to convince her, but she refused.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I jumped into my car, Sarah hopping in the passenger seat. She had my bow and her shotgun. I had given my two pistols to Hannah and Jessica. I saw Thomas waive in my rearview mirror, and we pulled out onto the empty highway. The trip to the store was uneventful, and in about three minutes we pulled up to the store, parked, and radioed the other cars. “Stay in the car. Sarah and I will confirm that the store is empty.”
“Copy.”
Sarah and I headed into the store, did a quick sweep and radioed the all clear.
The cars were backed up to the doors, and the group came in. Justin and Matt stood guard at the doors by the cars while the rest of us loaded up on supplies. We didn’t have enough bags at the house, so we planned to use doubled up garbage bags from the store. As we packed each bag full and loaded it into the trunks and back seats of the cars I heard Sarah call out to me, “Hey Andrew?”
“Yeah?”
“How many zombies did you say you had to take out?”
“Three. Why?” And then it dawned on me, she’d found the fourth.
“Then where’d he come from?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well. You see…” I started to say.
“Later,” she said angrily.
“Shit,” I mumbled and continued to load the cars.
After about forty-five minutes of work we had filled all four cars, but had only emptied a third of the store, forcing us to come back if we wanted the rest of what the store had to offer. I looked at the group. “Cars are full. Let’s bug out.”
When we got back to the house it took quite a bit less time to unload the multiple garbage bags than it had taken to fill them up. We dumped the supplies inside the garage and left them for the others to take inside.
We were pulling up to the store for our third trip when I saw a small group of Walkers approaching from a road to the west. They were far off enough as to not be an immediate problem, but I knew that we would have to deal with them sooner or laterWe backed the cars into position and I got out. “You guys finish up with the store, I’m going to take care of our friends up the road.”
“Just leave them,” said Sarah.
“No, if I don’t take care of them now, then they still pose a threat in the future. I don’t know how well their senses work, but what if they can track us? What if they make it back to the house? That’s not a risk I’m going to take.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” Sarah said.
“I’ve got it,” I said a little too quickly.
“James,” she warned.
“Sarah. Just… Don’t. Not right now. Please.”
She frowned, and let out a little huff as she joined the others in the store. I swiped a hand through my hair and started down the road. “Why do things have to be so complicated?” I wondered aloud before laughing a little. It was the end of the world as we knew it and I was worrie
d about being in trouble with Sarah. I chuckled again, drew in a deep breath and let it out, clearing my thoughts.
I guess this would be a good time to put the story on hold and explain myself a little. I had a thing for Sarah, still had a thing for Sarah. But I never asked her out. I knew she didn’t like me, at least not, you know, that way. One night I told her how I felt, and she was nice about it, letting me down softly, which in its own way was fucking awful. I didn’t like being treated like a kid with a crush, but she just wanted to be nice. She made it clear she didn’t like me in that way.
Maybe I handled it poorly. Maybe I should have asked her out and accepted the rejection, but I can’t change the past. She was a friend, and for a while, I was able to put my thoughts of her out of my mind, but I guess the end of the world can bring those thoughts back to the surface.
It wasn’t just because I liked Sarah that I told her to stay at the store, but because I had been forced to kill a few of these things, and I wanted to keep the others from having to do so for as long as I could. I knew that they weren’t human anymore, but they still kind of looked like one. That is, if you buried a guy alive, dug him up after a week, and then etched a look of pain and horror on his face.
So, to avoid scarring my friends any more than necessary, I went at it alone. As I got close, I saw it was a group of seven Walkers, and as I continued to walk closer they seemed to perk up a little. Two of them even started moving faster than the rest of the group. They must have been turned more recently, meaning they survived for at least a little while. I don’t know why, but that made me angry. These two must have worked hard to survive, but I guess they didn’t work hard enough. They epitomized what would happen if I let my guard down or if I failed.
I stopped, knocked an arrow and took aim. The first of the two recently turned Walkers went down with an arrow through her eye. The second, a man, took two shots, the first arrow went wide and sliced through his cheek. “Shit,” I mumbled. He slowed but didn’t go down. My second shot went through his skull.
The remaining five fell with little effort. I collected my arrows and bent down to examine the two faster zombies. I saw fresh bite marks on their arms and faces. The women had a large chunk taken out of her throat. I reached into the dead man’s pockets in search of a wallet and found one in his back pocket. I opened it and looked at his I.D. “Well Colin,” I said solemnly, “I guess you tried, huh?” I placed his wallet on the ground next to him and searched him for a weapon. I found a small revolver tucked into the back of his dirty jeans. “Why didn’t you use this?” I asked him as I cracked open the gun open. There were still three bullets left. I figured that he must have been surprised somehow, maybe caught while sleeping, otherwise any sane person would have either gone down fighting or shot themselves before turning. I decided not to check the others because they were either too decayed for my liking or, in the case of the recently turned girl, wearing far too little to be concealing anything of use. I tucked the revolver into my pocket and, after one last long look at my new friend Colin, walked further down the road. I checked the streets to make sure there were no stragglers and then turned to walk back to my friends.
“What took you so long?” asked Jessica.
“Oh, I was just making a new friend,” She just looked at me like I was crazy. “Never mind,” I shook my head at my poor excuse for a joke.
The drive back seemed to take forever, due to Sarah’s unwillingness to talk or even look at me. We got back, unloaded the cars and went inside, all without a word. I guess I’m in serious trouble, I thought to myself, Nice one Ryan.
That night around dinner I was explaining our current situation. “Okay guys, we’ve really extended our food supply, but we’re going to need to do a few more raids. Unfortunately, that means we’re going to have to go into a much more densely populated area. The power is out, and that means we’re going to need to use the generator eventually, which means gas. Also, I want to strengthen our armory. I want enough guns and ammo to outfit an army. I don’t want to have to worry about running out of bullets, because as far as we know, they’ll never run out of bodies to throw at us.” I looked up from my plate and was greeted with several shocked faces. They weren’t comfortable with the idea of killing yet. “Guys,” I said, looking at each one of them, “The Walkers aren’t people, they’re not even animals. They don’t feel pain, they don’t feel fear, they don’t feel at all. We, on the other hand, do. We need to make sure that we keep them away from us, and put down any that pose a threat.” I looked around as some of them began to nod. “Like I wrote on the board, I want to get a couple new vehicles so that we will have something tougher than our cars. This will also help when we go on raids because we’ll have more space.” I looked around, “Any suggestions?”
“We could use any easy to get cars we find to make a kind of fence along the tree line by the highway,” Jessica said.
“Good idea. We don’t have enough fencing to go around the entire property, so the cars will definitely help. Anything else?” Thomas raised his hand. “What the hell man? What’s with the hand?” I asked.
He grinned, put his hand down and said, “Can we change the watch schedule?”
“Yeah, no problem. You guys just pick the slot you want and I’ll take whatever’s left.” Carrie raised her hand. “What the… What are we, in kindergarten? I’m not your teacher, I’m not your boss, and I’m not going to be offended if you just speak. So speak up,” I said, feeling frustrated.
“I think we need to make a schedule or something for who’s going to bring water in since the power is out,” said Carrie.
“Good idea. Would you mind writing up a task list for that and anything else major that needs to be done on a daily basis? I think for the most part we can all use common sense, but it’ll be nice to have a list if anyone forgets.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Great. Anything else?” I asked again, looking at all of their expectant faces.
CHAPTER 4
We finished dinner and I went to clean the arrows I had used that day in a solution of bleach and water. I had gotten the second watch, from one to five, so I decided to catch a couple hours of sleep before I would have to head up to the roof.
I woke to the crackle of the radio and Matt’s voice saying, “James, wake up man.”
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs of sleep and picked up the radio. “I’m on my way,” I said.
I put on my jeans, a hoodie, and a jacket. I grabbed a bottle of water and a granola bar and headed outside. The hairs on my arms stuck up as goose bumps popped up all over my skin. Matt handed me the rifle and went inside, happy to get out of the cold and into the warm confines of his bed.
I knew, despite the cold, that if I sat down I would probably fall asleep, so I spent my time walking the roof for a good twenty minutes until I was fully awake. I sat down on the sleeping bag and stared off towards the road, using my night vision binoculars to cut through the darkness.
I heard the ladder start to clank against the gutter a few more minutes into my watch. We left it down now because it was getting annoying to raise and lower it. I saw a brown hair poke over the top. Sarah emerged onto the roof. Ugh, I thought as I walked over to help her up. She glanced at my hand and kept climbing.
I walked over to the sleeping bag and sat down, preparing for an earful about how I was a jerk, stupid, and going to get myself killed. She didn’t say any of those things, she didn’t say anything, she sat there in silence. A couple minutes passed, and I felt like I had to break the silence. “So you come here often?” I asked her with a smirk. She laughed a little and shook her head. “So what are you doing up here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“Funny, I thought you were up here because it’s just so much more comfortable on the roof.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said without any humor.
“Ok, what’s up?” I asked, knowing exactly what she wanted to talk about.
�
�Yesterday…” she began.
“What about yesterday?” I interrupted her. Yeah, good job, Ryan. Piss her off some more. That'll help, I thought.
“You went and killed those Walkers without backup.”
“Yeah…”
“Why wouldn’t you let me help?” she asked.
“Because I knew I could handle it on my own.” Sarah just stared at me in silence. “What?” I said defensively.
“You know what, James.”
“Okay. I didn’t want you to have to see that, to have to kill one of them. If we can make it through this with none of you having to kill a single Walker, then I’ll happily kill the whole god damn world for you.”
Survivors Series (Book 1): Heroes Aren't Born Page 6