When I woke up on Friday (Day 30), Ruth Ann was studying the laptop screen.
“There’s still one outside. He’s just standing in one spot like the first ones we saw in town.”
In daytime, the cameras showed a color picture as opposed to night’s black and white. The creature stood motionless to the northwest near the Boetche’s house.
“How long has he been like that?”
“It. It’s been like that for twenty minutes. There’s coffee for you.”
I like my coffee cold. The Keurig machine we have consumes all the watts generated by our rooftop panels when it brews so we used it carefully. The power consumption of the machine wasn’t going to be a concern much longer though. We’d be out of coffee tomorrow. Then it would be only tea. We had a lot of bulk tea.
The dead guy was stock still as I continued to watch. Our view was mostly of his back. He stood in a droopy way. His head was down. From this distance he could have been a stoner listening to the national anthem at a baseball game. He had on a light jacket, an arm in one sleeve over one shoulder. The other end lay limply down his back. Still consistent with the stoner image I thought dryly. His pants legs were bloody though.
We put the security DVR into playback mode. I stopped first on last night’s second creature, the woman that looked right up into the camera lens. “It’s looking right at the IR LEDs and paid no attention to them. She kept on walking,” I said.
“Does that really tell us much?”
“Maybe they can’t see infrared or maybe they weren’t cued into the illuminators because they were stationary.”
“Don’t all the zombie books say they see heat?”
“Pretty much.”
“Doesn’t infrared look warm?”
“Yeah.”
“So maybe they don’t see heat, or they do see heat but are triggered more by motion.”
“Or maybe the zombie books are full of shit. How can a virus instantly give dead people super hearing and vision?”
“How can a virus make dead people rise?”
“Good point.”
Debugging computer programs actually isn’t that hard though most programmers suck at it. The key is careful observation, formulating a testable hypothesis, performing tests and observing the results.
If we were going to live though this it would be because we thought things through, I believed. I can laugh at this remarkably naïve view now but I was sure of myself then.
“We can test their night vision,” I pronounced. “I have spare IR emitters that could easily run all night on some AA rechargeables. We can Velcro the setup to a tree branch so it sways in the wind like we did with the fake laser scopes. If more creatures walk by tonight and get excited then we know they can see IR.”
“How fast are they? To tell you the truth I wasn’t all that cued in on details when we were in the car.” Ruth Ann said.
“Me neither. We can measure them just from the video time codes we already have. Take some screenshots of them walking. We’ll go outside and stand where they were and measure. It won’t be super accurate but we can average a few measures together.”
“By “we” you mean me, right?”
“We both better go to cover each other. I’ll bring a tablet to view you through the cameras and do the timing.”
“OK”
“What about him?” I said pointing at the laptop.
“Shoot him first; answer questions later.” Ruth Ann said.
“Can we avoid guns? Every zombie book says they’re attracted to noise.” This was true, every fictional and nonfictional account said gunshots were like dinner bells.
“By “we” you mean me again?” she ribbed. “I’ll try the bow but we’re both bringing firearms.”
When it was time to take care of business we watched the all-camera view for about ten minutes. We flipped through the audio channels and heard nothing but wind noise. The stoner was unchanged. Ruth Ann attached her recurve hunting bow to its sling. Four razor tipped broad head arrows hung at her hip. We agreed that if she didn’t drop the stoner in two arrows we’d risk a gunshot. Slung on her back was our carbine. She held a spare clip in her coat pocket.
I had asked her if I shouldn’t go outside with the long rifle since I’d be further away. She looked at me, picked up the snub nosed revolver intended for in-home defense, checked its load and handed it to me. “Okaaaaay, there’s a vote of confidence,” I thought to myself.
I was also armed with a ten-inch Android tablet tuned into the house security DVR. I wasn’t sure how far WIFI would reach outside so I wouldn’t be venturing too far away. I did not want to give up the security of the all-camera view.
I made for the heavy sliding glass door at the back deck. Ruth Ann stopped me by saying, “We can’t lock that from the outside. Let’s use the front door.”
“What if we get locked out?”
“Don’t” she said. “Bring your keys. The chances of being locked out are small compared to the risk of one of those things getting inside the house through an open door.”
She was right. We both took our keys and went to the front door. Looking at the tablet’s screen, all cameras showed clear except for the stoner. Ruth Ann silently undid the lock and hasps. With a nod from me she quietly opened the door. “He’s still there,” she whispered, but I could see that on the tablet.
I nodded and made a “let’s go” gesture. She opened the door wider. I checked the knob to make sure the door would lock behind us. We both were outside. I stood behind Ruth Ann and, realizing she was crouched low I quickly did the same. It occurred to me that I’m more Dumbo to her Rambo.
She motioned for the evergreen bush, a young tree actually, ahead and to the left of our driveway. We could see through the tree and knew it wasn’t hiding anything. Almost winter, the grass was still short in our yard. Beyond the road separating us from the Boetche’s backyard were wild grasses tall enough to conceal a body. All the trampled tall grass trails passed completely through. I was confident there were no threats there.
We crept low over to the evergreen. Ruth Ann pointed at me and pointed to the ground. This was to be my spot. My feed from the DVR was fine. I nodded to signal my understanding.
Ruth Ann continued crouched low. She crossed the road and reached the edge of the tall grass. She gave me a backwards glance. No threats on camera, I signaled thumbs up.
She crept into the tall grass, taking one of the trails made by the dead the night before. Crouched down, just her shoulders and head were visible. The stoner stood still, looking away from us.
Ruth Ann was about two thirds of the way through the tall grass making steady progress. She stopped. I heard a loud sustained moan like only the start of a pirate’s “Arg!” Ruth Ann bolted upright and grabbed for something at her waist. I saw her hatchet rise up; I didn’t even know she had it. She swung it down viciously. The pirate went silent.
The stoner snapped his head around, much faster than I anticipated. Turning, his whole front was covered in dried blood and he was missing all the skin on his face. Nose, cheeks, lips everything was gone. Just its teeth and eyes remained. Eyes fixed on Ruth Ann. I yelled. Ruth Ann dropped her hatchet.
The stoner was about 40 yards from Ruth Ann when it snapped out of its stupor. This was the far end of the range Ruth Ann said she was comfortable taking the shot with her bow. The stoner was on the move now. On the bright side, Ruth Ann would have the benefit of a shorter shot whether she used her bow or carbine.
I could see her left elbow move back to grab the grip of her bow. Then her right arm disappeared in front of her. I knew she was unclipping the bow from its sling. Her right hand shot down to her waist to her quiver. Up went an arrow then up went the bow bending as it rose. The creature had staggered more than five yards in the short time that had elapsed. This was faster than I expected, yet again.
It was leaning into its path, left arm out reaching for Ruth Ann. She took aim for what seemed like hours. At thirty yards sh
e loosed. It was fucking gorgeous.
From where I was I couldn’t tell if there was an arc to the arrow’s flight but where it terminated its travel was certain. It passed into the creature’s right cheek bone near its eye and nasal cavity. I saw the arrowhead glint in the sun poking out the base of the creature’s skull as it twisted on its way down.
We both stood there. Presently Ruth Ann turned and walked upright back to the house. I intersected her path but before I could speak she said, “Don’t say anything. Spray me with bleach water and let’s get the fuck inside.”
We didn’t set up our experiments that day. Not testing vision or speed. It was enough to know the creatures could move much more quickly than we saw the night before. Indeed, we were pretty much cured of the desire to experiment at all.
We did not venture outside again that day. Instead, Ruth Ann sat quietly in the kitchen and slowly nursed some tea. We didn’t talk till it was dark.
Finally she said, “I left my hatchet outside. And I want that arrow back. We don’t have that many.”
Before I could say anything she turned to me.
“There wasn’t supposed to be anything in the grass, Doug. You said the trails went all the way through.” Ruth Ann drilled her eyes into mine, they were puffy but I hadn’t seen her cry.
“I know. I’m sorry. I played back all of last night. After we fell asleep one went in right behind another. The second one tripped on something, I saw it go down. The one in front continued on out of the grass making the trail look all the way through.”
“When we were in the car I didn’t look at them, I concentrated on staying moving and staying on the road. Today, today was different. There was no color in its skin. Their eyes are filmy like they had cataracts. There’s no soul inside Doug. There’s no person in there. They… They’re monsters. They really are… monsters.”
“It’s OK honey. We’ll be OK.”
“Doug?”
Our faces were inches from each other’s, I nodded.
“You have to learn to shoot better. You have to be able to cover me with more than a tablet.”
“Yes dear.”
Ruth Ann took some antihistamines to help her sleep. She went to the living room to the couches. We didn’t want to be too far away from each other. We believed our house to be a fortress, but it didn’t matter. We needed to stay close to each other tonight.
I sat in the kitchen, angry that I had let Ruth Ann wander into a potentially lethal situation practically in our own front yard. I grabbed a pencil and pad and started thinking about what stuff I had and how I could apply it.
It occurred to me that, like it or not, our home is situated in a battlefield. While we had more surveillance capability than most homes, we needed to be able to see further out at night. It also occurred to me that there were no neighbors to complain and nobody to complain to if we started shaping the battlefield more in our favor.
Hell, if we could loot our neighbor’s homes – I mean borrow from our neighbors, why couldn’t we use their homes to help keep us safe?
Just before midnight, the police scanner stopped on an FRS channel and burped out some static. FRS is the Family Radio Service. These little, often cheap, handheld radios used to be available everywhere. The police scanner covers a lot of bands and stops only when it gets a strong enough signal. Unfortunately, that could be anywhere in a transmission, including its end.
The scanner is programmed to dwell on a frequency for a few seconds when it finds a signal on the assumption that someone would quickly respond. Someone did. I heard a crackly “OK” and then another burp of static. I turned off the scanning feature and stayed on this one FRS frequency but I heard nothing else until I went to bed.
Somewhere within a small number of miles of here, at least two people were alive. Since I heard nothing else for as long as I listened, I assume they were passing through. Still, it was nice to know we weren’t alone for a few minutes at least.
On Saturday (Day 31), Ruth Ann was up before me as usual. The events of yesterday seemed forgotten. The last of our coffee sat waiting for me on the table. As I reached for it, I reflected for a moment about how I was sad to see the coffee run out. I knew that millions maybe billions had already died and would continue to die of hunger, thirst disease, and the undead.
I wondered how a person could be empathic on a conceptual level and entirely self-absorbed about what’s right in front them. I know I’m not the first to observe this. Didn’t Stalin say “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic”? I wonder what Uncle Joe would say about billions.
“I saw deer wandering through at sunup,” she said.
“Really? Turkeys the other night and deer this morning? Yet we didn’t see any livestock when we went to town. I wonder which it is, do the dead eat animals or not?”
“I don’t know but I do know how long one deer will feed us. We should take one if we can.”
“You know how I just love to get up that early.”
“You like to eat, right?”
“OK – we’ll do it but only if there aren’t any walkers around.”
“Duh!”
Assuming no unwanted pedestrians tonight, we agreed we’d be ready to hunt tomorrow morning.
I told Ruth Ann about hearing a signal on an FRS band last night. She perked up.
“We don’t have any kind of transmitter do we?”
“No. I ordered FRS radios from Amazon for that last delivery. They didn’t make it. So, right, we have no way of initiating contact with anybody.”
Some days back I had connected up one of the Raspberry Pi’s to function as a local email server. We used the WIFI portion of our phones to buzz each other via email. That would do us little good trying to reach out to anyone else.
“We need some radios,” she said.
“When do you think we should do it?”
“Do what?”
“Go to the building supply warehouse. They’ll have that there and more.”
“Yeah, and how many zombies? They were right outside the house Doug. We’re not exactly a SWAT team that can go into a dark warehouse complex and come out alive. Put radios down on the “wants” list.”
I did not dare mention that it was her idea to seek out radios in the first place.
Our list of “wants” wasn’t terribly long but it wasn’t empty either. Fortunately, the list of “needs” remained blank for now. That’ll change, I thought to myself. I’d put coffee on the “needs” list or even on a “must have” list if we had one. As it was, Ruth Ann rolled her eyes at me when I put coffee on the “wants” list.
“I want more arrows,” Ruth Ann said while looking at nothing in particular. “If the dead are close enough for a bow shot, we might be in bad shape if we fire a gun.”
“I bought four boxes of them. They came in that last UPS truck.”
“You bought the small boxes, six to a box. Plus I don’t have as many broad heads as I’d like. You didn’t buy any of those.”
“Who would have thought you could buy an arrow that didn’t come with an arrow head?” I said defensively. “Flynn up the street bow hunted. They’re long gone. I don’t think they’ll mind if we “borrowed” some.”
Flynn’s house is the one north of the Boetche’s. By now I was completely untroubled by any notion of a double standard. We had killed looters. Now borrowing a few things from absent neighbors seemed quite reasonable.
“Given how useful a bow is, don’t you think he would have taken his?”
“No, they packed a few suitcases and got out on the first day of evacuations. Their kid needs medication. They weren’t going to rough it.”
We decided a trip to Flynn’s house would be in order.
I brought up what I was thinking about the night before. We could use our neighbors’ empty homes to extend our own safety.
“Let’s try nailing one of those spare IR emitters up on Boetche’s roof as a start. The infrared lights on our cameras don’t reach too
far. If we place an IR light source on their roof, we will be able to see all the way to their house. Their south side faces us so that little solar phone charger I bought last year can trickle charge batteries during the day and it’ll shine all night.”
“You can leave that sort of thing outside?”
“I have no idea. Can you spare a Tupperware container?”
“No… you can have a Rubbermaid”
I explained to Ruth Ann the holes I needed to get current from the little solar panel to a battery pack and out again to feed the IR emitter. We used some silicone caulk to seal the holes.
Before we headed out to the Flynn’s, Ruth Ann went up to the roof to tend the garden. I topped off the water vessels in the house by running the pump. It didn’t take very long to refill the bathtubs (one for gardening water, the other for a sequence of washing us, cleaning and a final reuse for flushing) and one of our collapsible five gallon containers (for drinking). I joined Ruth Ann on the roof. I gently swept a thin film of dust off the solar panels then checked their connections and mountings. While doing that I looked around for where I might put a WIFI access point to extend our range outside the house.
Ruth Ann and I took a good look at the Boetche’s house and agreed that the top of their garage would be the best place to put the IR emitter. Unlike our garage which was tucked under our master bedroom, the Boetche’s garage was semidetached. We’d need only a one story ladder which we already had.
For a while we looked at Flynn’s house through our binoculars. There was a tree line beyond his house and a lot of space which we could not see. The house looked untouched. There was no reason to think otherwise. The group of creatures that passed through the other day left only the two stragglers Ruth Ann had killed so far as we could see.
We decided to visit Flynn’s house first before putting up the IR emitter. We’d been close to Boetche’s already and knew what we could see from our house was still clear. We decided we’d go alongside the Boetche’s house and peek around front. This would give us a look up their street towards Flynn’s at what we couldn’t see from here.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 6