The camera was back on the newcomer. Camera and reporter moved out of the stairwell into a floor of cubicles.
“And even if the doors hold, you can see we’re not exactly equipped for a siege. When the emergency supplies are exhausted and the vending machine food is gone, we know we are going to starve. Water pressure here in CNN Center has been fluctuating. There’s a chance we will run out of water before we run out of food.”
The camera centered on the kid’s face. Its youth was gone. His eyes were wet, tired, red and puffy. He had several days of stubble that would have been considered a risky career move before all this. He said nothing for a bit. Then he began shaking his head. The camera pulled back. The kid was looking away from the camera and waving his hand to shut down.
“Bob, that’s it. I can’t do this anymore. Go find Deborah. I can’t do this” An infographic replaced the kid.
I had to think that an organization like CNN would keep things together better than the kid was making it out to be. There must be a helipad on their building, right? There is no way an organization like that would let their people die, trapped in their own headquarters. But that is what happened.
I do not know what became of the kid. I haven’t seen him since broadcasts resumed. His report was the last broadcast television Ruth Ann and I saw for a very long time.
The power grid failed later that evening. I took a camp light to the mechanical room and made the necessary changes at the breaker panel and electrical box. We would be running key services off the solar charged batteries in the basement from here on out. At the breaker panel, I made sure breakers for lines we weren’t going to use were switched off to prevent mistakes. The loss of local power took down our Internet access as well. The world as Ruth Ann and I appreciated it was shutting down.
The other big change was the police scanner. Teams of deputies were pairing with National Guard troops to engage the dead as they were found near the safe zone at the airport. Their strategy was sound. Engage the dead only from intersections to maximize escape options. They picked off ghouls from outside their patrol vehicles. If the dead got close, they’d get back into their car and move to another intersection. The dispatch center helped the teams to keep to intersections where they could render mutual aid.
We heard no one lose his or her life on this day.
Ruth Ann wondered aloud “If all the deputies are in Chippewa Falls, who is patrolling out here?”
She knew the answer.
The answer was confirmed the next morning, Thursday (Day 15). Dispatchers on the scanner told any officers listening that looting was taking place across the area. They were ordered not to intercede if they saw any. In fact, law enforcement was ordered to stop enforcing any laws. All personnel were needed at the safe zone.
Ruth Ann and I were up on the roof. She was tending the garden, getting some fresh greens together for lunch. I was keeping watch. That is to say, I was keeping her company and was aimlessly looking at the scenery. I heard a crash from the road to our east. Across the open yards and tall grasses, a large blue pickup truck sat in the driveway two houses north, the Xian’s house. I quietly called Ruth Ann over and we watched from the cover of the parapet wall. The bed of the pickup was partially filled with stuff. The stuff looked tossed together, not like someone packing their own possessions in an organized way.
A front window had been bashed in to make entry into the home. The front door was open now. A large man with a rifle stepped out the front door, looked around then looked back at the door. He made a “come on” motion with his hand. Two other men with rifles slung on their backs came out of the door carrying boxes. We could not see what they had; just that it was boxes piled with more differently colored stuff.
Looters had come to the neighborhood.
We watched them make a few more trips back into the house. Two of the men walked to the next house in our direction belonging to the James’. The big man got in the truck and drove it to the next driveway. Getting out of the truck with a baseball bat, he walked up to the front door and bashed in the sidelight near the door lock. As he strode back to the truck to toss the bat in the cab, a partner reached in through the broken glass and undid the door’s lock. The big guy resumed his watch and the other two went to work clearing out what they wanted.
“We better get ready for them,” I said to my wife.
She went for her hunting rifle and the carbine with a supply of ammunition for both. I went to the garage and brought up an old portable P.A. system I had from my days doing trade shows. At 150 watts it would be ear splitting in what was otherwise silence. I would speak loudly and Ruth Ann would carry a high powered stick.
While I was setting up and trying to remember how the P.A. worked, Ruth Ann set up in a prone position with a view of our own road and driveway through a drainage port. We were set and had agreed on a plan by the time the men cleared out the last house, the Olson’s, before ours. They all hopped in the truck to make the slightly longer trip to our road. I watched them approach our road with the security camera tablet app so that I remained completely hidden. I flipped on the P.A.
As they made the turn to enter our road I put on my best “boss” voice.
“Driver! Halt! Halt or be fired upon.”
The truck lurched to a stop, heads turned inside the cab trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
“You had your fun. Back up and leave.”
We could see the movement inside the cab. Ruth Ann and I agreed we would push them fast and hard to keep them disoriented. We figured these were not professional looters but more “looters of opportunity.” We wouldn’t give them a chance to form a plan. Ruth Ann fired a round that exploded the driver’s side headlight.
“Driver! That was your headlight. The next one will be your head. Leave now. No more warnings.” That was the coolest thing I’ve ever said out loud.
The truck backed up and burned rubber away out of the neighborhood.
“We better keep a close watch tonight,” Ruth Ann said.
“Think they’ll come back, do you?”
“They’re males. Males always want something more when somebody says they can’t have it. We just told them they can’t have this house. If they’re like most men, they’ll be back.”
“Ah,” time to change subject I thought. “We can’t risk losing any of our cameras and I’d hate to lose a window,” I said. The shutters upstairs were closed matching the inoperable shutters on the first floor. They were there to protect the second floor glass from windblown debris. I didn’t expect them to fair well against bullets.
“The cameras are up high, they may not have even noticed them. The real windows are on the second floor so they’re up high too. Sounds like we need to keep their attention on the first floor where they can’t hurt anything.”
Ruth Ann was right. The thugs had already demonstrated their preferred means of breaking in, a baseball bat to a ground floor window or door. I wasn’t worried about our front door. Even if they did to us what they did to the James’ house, it would do them no good. They could get to the door’s deadbolt but they couldn’t reach its twin hasps. It would be hilarious to watch them try and break into our first floor “windows.” Good luck to them with that.
“Laser gun sights are intimidating, right?” I said.
“Yeah very, but they tell the bad guys exactly where you are.”
“Perfect.”
I told Ruth Ann what I had in mind for a diversion. She thought it was worth a try. Over the remainder of our lunch we talked strategy.
“If we’re going to defend our castle Doug, you are going to have to shoot somebody. Lucky for us, too bad for them, it is a full moon tonight. I’ll put a red dot scope on the carbine. All you have to do is put the red dot on your target and squeeze the trigger.”
“But a laser will tell them where I am, you said.”
“A laser is different from a red dot. A laser reaches out and touches the target. A red dot glows just inside y
our own scope. Nobody else can see it.”
“Got it. But I’ve never shot anything before. Let alone a person.”
“At this range all you have to do is line up the dot, relax and squeeze. If you’re having an inner moral conflict it’s the easiest one of all to work out. Either you kill them or they kill you. Any questions?”
I opened my mouth to say something. But I closed it again. There was nothing to say.
I had a classroom’s worth of Raspberry Pi’s in the house that I was preparing to donate to the local middle school. The Pi is a credit card sized full blown computer that was designed in England by a charitable foundation seeking to teach kids about technology. They are easy to program and consume next to no power. One of the things they are great at is controlling other devices. For instance, a Pi can control relays on another little board to turn lamps on and off. For every Pi I had, I had an eight channel relay board to go with it.
Ruth Ann drilled a hole about the diameter of a pencil in four shutters on the sides of the house, two each to the northeast and southwest. I broke the laser diodes out of some laser pointers and presentation remote controls. I soldered up new leads to their power pins. They take 3 volts at less than a watt. Easy enough.
Ruth Ann just barely attached the laser diodes inside the shutters. We would let the wind cause a little movement so the beams didn’t just sit there. I ran speaker wire up to the roof and connected each side’s pair of diodes to a Pi connected to a relay board. I wrote a little Python program that caused the diodes to turn on for three seconds at a time at random intervals.
The net effect was that it would look like there were four shooters in the “windows” peering through the shutters. If the bad guys were going to shoot at something, their first and maybe last shots might be at solid concrete hidden by aluminum siding.
We tried to come up with a way of protecting the greenhouse and solar panels. Coming up with nothing, we hoped to engage them when they were close enough not to be able to see those vital but fragile structures at all from ground level.
Today’s radio update brought two pieces of international news. The Queen of England and Prince Philip had been killed. Like her father during World War II, Elizabeth chose to stay in London during her people’s greatest need. The Royal Family was safe within a bunker far below the city’s streets. Someone in her household staff smuggled in a family member who died and reanimated inside the Royal Apartments themselves. The whereabouts of her successors were not immediately known. The United Kingdom would know a state of interregnum not experienced since the 17th century.
The other news told that Canada had offered blanket admission to all Americans provided they not transit the border at established crossings. Crowding at the formal crossings resulted in massive carnage from uncontrolled infection. Canadians and fleeing Americans were urged to gather in small groups and use Canada’s vast expanses of emptiness as their defense. The Canadian government moved to the large island in the Manicouagan Reservoir. One asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Another saved the Canadian command authority.
At three AM on Friday morning, (Day 16), Ruth Ann saw the glow of headlights on McKenzie Road, an east west road that runs past our neighborhood. There is a berm parallel to McKenzie lined with trees shielding our development from the road but it was easy enough to see the glow come to a stop and then go out.
The berm and its neighboring open space are about twenty yards wide. Then, an east west road inside our development runs past our block. That’s another ten yards. Finally, our corner house is set back on the south by about thirty yards. Once clearing the trees on the berm, these guys would have to cross more than forty yards of open ground with next to no cover lit up by a full moon. If we had to be visited by armed looters we could be thankful they were stupid armed looters.
A total of five men poked cautiously out of the trees. A pair appeared just to the west of us, they’d try the front of the house. A trio appeared just to the east. They’d try the back. Ruth Ann quietly shifted over to cover the trio, I drew the pair. Each man carried a rifle. One of mine was dressed in hunter’s blaze orange. He did not blend into the background.
The others dressed in darker winter coats. They inched closer. I put the P.A. system away earlier which was good because I was so tempted to shout “We can see you, you know.” But I didn’t.
We waited until they reached our lawn. I hate people on my lawn. Not that I care about the lawn itself as a body of grass. For all I care it could be green painted asphalt. The thing is it’s my fucking lawn and you don’t come on it unless you’re invited.
Like all “good” gunfights, in addition to surviving, this one was over quickly.
I triggered the phony laser gun sights. One of my guys dropped to the ground and one of Ruth Ann’s did as well. All five rifles aimed at the first floor. I actually fired before Ruth Ann. I put the red dot on the center of standing guy’s chest and didn’t hesitate. The view through the red dot sight made it look a little like a video game. That’s how I put out of my mind that I was squeezing the trigger of a real gun pointed at real person. I breathed in, let a little out then squeezed the trigger. I felt myself jerk in anticipation of the recoil.
I missed. But not by much, standing guy decided right then he’d had enough and turned around running.
Ruth Ann’s hunting rifle had cycled twice while I moved in slow motion. Two of her targets who had fired at the first floor were dead with headshots. Only two targets remained between us.
Both lifted their rifles up to the second floor. My guy was prone - it was hard for him to angle upwards. As he did, I got to look him straight in the eye when I squeezed my trigger. One shooter left.
That one took a bite out of the wall a few inches from its top demonstrating he had no idea we were firing through the drainage ports at the floor of the roof. Ruth Ann made her hat trick.
And that was that.
Ruth Ann and I awoke in the late morning of Friday, Day 16. We were still in our clothes sprawled out on the living room couches. We hadn’t talked much about how we spent our night. We killed four people. Ruth Ann looked into me and knew what I was thinking.
“Nobody forced them to come back, Doug. That they were here at all is proof enough of their intent.”
“I know.”
“So none of this self-doubt and what ifs you obsess on, OK?”
Maybe she didn’t know what I was thinking.
“That’s not it hon. It’s that, well, there are four dead guys on our lawn. What the fuck do we do with them?”
“Oh… That is a good question. You got yours in the head right? We won’t be seeing them walking around again, that’s good. We’ve got that going for us.”
“How about dumping them in one of the houses they broke into?”
“We can’t bury them. The ground is too hard for us to dig in. Yeah, that would be good karma I suppose. What goes around comes around.”
“Let’s get to it then. I’d rather throw up on an empty stomach and not waste any food.”
First, we checked the security cameras. There was no activity outside except some crows picking at the looters’ remains. We watched for a few minutes anyway, cycling through the cameras one by one so we could hear the output of their mikes. Just crow and wind noises.
We went to the garage. I tossed some garbage bags in the car and manually raised the door for Ruth Ann to back the car out. Ruth Ann moved the wagon over to the first body. My first body I should say. It was the moron in the orange hunter covers.
Ruth Ann looked at the cadaver and said, “I’ve seen this fucker before. He followed me out of Freddie’s gun shop the other day. Freddie had said we lived in a bunker and this guy perked up.”
“Well, he found us. Sucks for him.”
Ruth Ann checked out his weapon and looked through his pockets for anything useful he might have carried. We didn’t bother looking at his ID. Looter J. Looter was enough ID for us. I worked a garbage bag over the guy’s head.
Ruth Ann said his rifle matched her .308 hunting rifle caliber so we would be keeping it. Together we put the guy feet first most of the way into the bed of our wagon.
I walked on to the group of three that Ruth Ann had dispatched while she drove the car with its hatch still up. We were just starting our work when the sound of heavy engines scared the shit out of us.
Looking up, a line of four Humvees was heading right for us. Each had a soldier standing behind an M60 machine gun.
I’m stuffing a guy’s head into a garbage bag and Ruth Ann has her hands in his pockets. There are two more dead guys next to us and one more hanging out the back of our car. I was hoping Ruth Ann would say “Let me do the talking.” But she didn’t.
The lead Humvee stopped near us. I watched with dismay as two of the M60’s turned in our direction. A tired looking lieutenant exited the Humvee’s passenger side. One hand rested above his undrawn side arm. His other held a clipboard. I got even more nervous as clipboards can be more dangerous than guns.
“Mr. and Mrs. Handsman?” he said half looking at us half at his clipboard.
“Yes, that’s us. How can we help you?” I said sounding like an idiot.
“I am Lieutenant Mancheski, Wisconsin National Guard. Who are your friends?”
“Looters. They did those three houses yesterday,” I pointed, “and came for us at three this morning.”
“I see,” he looked at the looted homes then at the corpses. I could see in his face he was done thinking about three dead looters.
“Mr. Handsman, sir, this is our last time through the area. If you wish to come with us, we can escort you to the safe zone. The number of walkers we are running into is increasing quickly. We cannot protect you out here...” He nodded towards the bodies.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 3