We could see Ryan read the email and type a reply. In a few seconds my tablet buzzed with his answer.
“Tired thirsty hungry no broken skin not sick. Thank you so much!!”
I wrote back:
“Stay quiet and don’t move. My helicopter needs 45 minutes to recharge. You’ll be OK. We will come up with a plan.”
He read the email and nodded back to us. He laid down again. I am sure the pounding on the garage walls and the dead’s deafening howls made it impossible for him to go to a happy place.
It didn’t take Ruth Ann and me long to come up with an idea. We would make a diversion to give Ryan a chance to get on the ground and run. He could stay in our garage for a day to see if he got sick. If he did, we’d have to deal with it.
Ruth Ann and I put some blankets, a sleeping bag, change of clothes, food and water into our garage along with a spray bottle of bleach water. I released the garage door’s hasps and reengaged the electric lift mechanism. We left him a tablet and its power brick so he could monitor the cameras, listen to music and even watch a movie for distraction.
Finally, we included both earplugs and a set of over-the-ear headphones. We had already learned that the dead can be loud enough to wake the living and then some.
We emailed Ryan our plan. We told him we were sorry we would not let him in directly and that staying in the garage for a day would be safe and relatively comfortable. He wrote back that he understood and our garage would be better than what he had been through.
While we waited for the hexacopter’s batteries to recharge the banging and howling continued over at the Boetche’s garage. By our count there were twenty-two zombies fixated on getting at Ryan. They looked as if they would climb on each other if they were packed densely enough. They lacked the cognitive ability to work together so without a crush of others, Ryan would continue to be safe. The thought crossed my mind that in the middle of a horde, even a second floor wouldn’t be safe.
Finally, the battery recharge time had elapsed. We wrote to Ryan:
“We are ready to draw them off you. Wait for our signal. When clear, run to our garage. Don’t trip on the body in the tall grass. Sorry again about quarantine – can’t take chances. We’ll open the door when you get close. You close it. Button is near inner door. Hang on to our phone, OK?”
Ryan gave us the thumbs up. My drone lifted off. Slung beneath it was another light plastic grocery bag with our second phone in it. Its volume was turned up to its maximum and was playing MP3 files. Before you wonder, Barry Manilow and Barry White were far less effective in getting the ghoul’s attention than B.I.G and Dr. Dre. With the phone on random play of what ever happened to be on it we couldn’t pick and choose.
The dead didn’t hear the music over their own screaming and pounding until the drone got close to them. Our location went unnoticed. I hovered above their reach buzzing back and forth until I had the attention of most of them. I slowly flew just ahead of them and drew more than a dozen towards Flynn’s house. They moved like a spastic train. I had to loop back a few times to ensure that I continued to hold their attention while softer songs played.
I flew as far away from both Ryan and us as I thought I could safely fly and not lose control of the drone. I hit the “Hold Station” button on the remote control. The hexacopter would keep itself steady within a small radius of where I left it several feet above the reach of the monsters.
Ruth Ann started firing on the dead that I didn’t draw away. She quickly downed the few on the south west side of the Boetche’s garage. Ryan put our ladder down and started to descend. I ran downstairs to the garage with another one of our tablets so I could monitor the surveillance cameras. Our garage door area remained clear. Ruth Ann continued dropping whatever ghoul was closest to Ryan as he ran to us. On another camera I saw the dead that followed the hexacopter were on their way back towards the source of the louder noise, Ruth Ann’s gunfire.
As Ryan reached our garage I opened the inner door and depressed the garage door button. As the door lifted I was once more thankful for the tax credit that allowed us to install our solar panels. I closed and bolted the inner door. I heard Ryan run into the garage and slam the button just on the other side of the wall from my head.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah.”
“Strip out of your clothes and throw them in the corner. Spray yourself with bleach water and wash off. We left you clean clothes. I have to go back upstairs now. OK?”
I didn’t wait for his answer.
As soon as I got upstairs, I brought the drone back. The phone / decoy kept belting out tunes as the hexacopter bounced to a landing next to me.
“Is he OK?” Ruth Ann asked as she changed clips.
“He’s inside,” not actually answering the question. “How many things are left?”
“Look for yourself, they’re right downstairs.”
I looked over the parapet into the snarling faces of a dozen creatures. The stink, even outdoors was surprisingly bad. Some were rotted with tattered clothes. Others, like a kid no older than Ryan looked to be in great shape other than paper-thin ashen skin, broken jagged teeth and filmy eyes. It wore a University of Minnesota Golden Gophers jacket. Did the thing walk here from the Twin Cities?
They pounded and kicked the siding and garage door. They charged the house with all their weight rebounding with no apparent sense of the impact. A lot of good it would do them.
Ruth Ann handed me the carbine and made sure I had properly wrapped the sling around my arm. “Safety off?” she said.
“Safety is off.” I flipped the switch, pleased that I remembered where it was.
“OK then, lean over the side and kill the fuckers.”
I watched her mouth say those words and pictured them saying “I love you,” even “I do,” at our wedding. I couldn’t believe I was hearing “kill the fuckers” come from my wife’s lips. I considered for a moment that some of the creatures below had no lips at all anymore. They too had said “I love you” during their own now finished lives.
“Relax Doug. Remember what we worked on. Squeeze the trigger. Don’t anticipate the recoil. Just let it happen.”
I did as she said. The weapon discharged before I realized it. If the sling hadn’t been wrapped around my arm I would have dropped the carbine over the side. A bullet tore through the Gopher’s outstretched hand and pierced its brain.
“Good. Take your time. Breath. Do the next one.”
I pointed the gun at the next closest monster, also right below me. This was a big burly man. One of the arms that reached up for me ended in ripped flesh and two jagged broken bones. As I squeezed the trigger it was shaking its head like a dog with a chew toy. My shot entered its temple and came out the other side. In going down, the big guy bowled over two ghouls next to him. My next shot entered one of the grounded creature’s forehead just above its nose. Apart from rocking the creature’s head backward there was no reaction in its face. It didn’t grimace in pain, nor show surprise nor even close its filmy eyes. It just “stopped.”
Ruth Ann put down her hunting rifle and fired our revolver. I kept firing as well. Our shots created a syncopated rhythm that I imagined could have been featured in one of the gangsta rap songs that had drawn the undead so effectively during our diversion to save Ryan.
Suddenly there was banging from the south side of the house. I went to it, leaned over the parapet, and was unexpectedly ten feet closer to two ghouls than I was before. These had climbed our deck and were pounding on and kicking our sliding glass door. I could see puss and goo left as ugly streaks and even face prints on the reinforced glass. The creatures faced straight ahead until I made a tiny noise in moving my rifle into position. Their hearing was quite intact.
I had been worried about this door as being our weak link. I realized now the stairs had to go. Maybe the whole deck had to go. It was not an acceptable risk to permit access to the glass door even if it was laminated in baseball bat rated plastic. Removin
g the deck would be for a different day. Right now I removed the threats on the deck with the carbine. The last shell ejected differently than the others. I recognized this as being out of ammo.
Ruth Ann had already used a speed loader and was on her second set of six shots. When I returned to the front of the house, Ruth Ann was holstering the revolver.
“Is that all of them?” I asked.
“No, there’s a couple more out front and there are more heading our way. I want to get some practice with the crossbow.”
Setting up the crossbow to fire was a multistep process involving feet, bending and cranking. Clearly this weapon could only be used at a safe distance as reloading is too slow to be useful in close quarters. The crossbow was so powerful that from our almost straight down firing angle the first bolt disappeared down the insides of the zombie. It was as good as lost. I sure wasn’t going to fish it out.
Ruth Ann just shrugged her shoulders and put down the crossbow. She supervised me reloading the carbine and I took down the remaining few at the base of the house. This left only those still heading for us from a distance attracted by the noise.
We crouched down and watched the ghouls heading towards us. They continued in our direction for a bit but seemed to lose focus after a while without continued noise and motion. This was the first time we witnessed what amounts to “undead attention deficit disorder.” Low temperature slows whatever passes for thought inside their minimally functional brains.
If they can see or hear you or if close, smell you, they’ll come after you relentlessly. If another ghoul is lashing out at something, ghouls nearby will maintain focus and be drawn in. But, if you had a good place to hide that gave them no further stimulus, the colder it gets the greater the potential they could lose interest. That does not mean they’ll wander off. They might enter a low power mode and just stand there. They can stand still far longer than a trapped person can wait.
Ruth Ann wanted more practice with the crossbow. She noisily loaded up another bolt and rose slowly above the parapet wall to take aim. A moment after she fired a creature heading away from us spun violently to the ground. In the time it took Ruth Ann to crouch back down behind the wall, the creature got back to his feet and continued walking in another direction entirely, a crossbow bolt protruding from the back of its shoulder.
Ruth Ann said, “I would need more practice with this before I’d really trust it.” as she put down the crossbow. “At distance I’m not accurate enough with it yet. The feel is between bow and rifle. It’s like trying to play tennis and then ping pong. It’s too awkward for me.”
“It was pretty exciting close up,” I replied. “Termination with extreme prejudice.”
“Yeah, that first shot probably stopped somewhere in the bastard’s leg.”
“You’re more than welcome to look for it.”
“No thanks. Let’s get off the roof and check on Ryan.”
We gathered our equipment and in two trips had the roof cleaned up.
“Ryan?” Ruth Ann and I were at the door to the garage.
“Ryan?” Ruth Ann called again. There was no answer.
“RYAN?” we both yelled through the door.
“Here, yeah. I’m here.” We heard him come to the door.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m good. I had your headphones on. I never thought I’d see a movie again. Are they gone outside?”
“There are a few left but they lost interest in us.” I said.
“Yeah they do that in the cold.”
“Ryan, honey?” said Ruth Ann.
“Yes Mrs. Handsman?”
“Ryan, how did you get here?”
“I drove.” Apparently even in the apocalypse you had to pull teeth to get information out of a teenager.
“We know that. We need to know where you came from and how you survived to get here.”
“The Brute and I drove from the capital.”
“You drove from Madison?” we were confused.
“No, from Sturgeon Bay. There are a couple of hundred thousand people in Door County now. It’s the largest settlement in the Midwest.”
We knew refugees were being collected in the safety of Door County but two hundred thousand people being the largest settlement in an area that encompassed Chicago, the Twin Cities and Milwaukee?
“What about the cities? What about the Twin Cities, Chicago? Is it as bad as the radio says?” Ruth Ann asked.
“Worse, Mrs. Handsman. Cities belong to the dead. I heard stories of people in tall buildings around the country that destroyed the stairs below them. They grow food on their rooftops and balconies. But that’s it. Bigger the city, bigger the horde that’s going to come out of it once they eaten everything they can find.”
“Who is the Brute? Where is he?” Ruth Ann asked.
“His real name was Bert. He was regular Army. We drove together. I had my car and he drove his motorcycle. He scouted ahead so we could avoid getting stuck by wrecks.”
“Where is he now?”
“He got eaten a couple of nights ago. He told me on the radio he saw some wrecks and was going to check them out. I said “OK”. I followed behind him. I saw him skid out on some ice and he slid right into a dozen of those fucks. Excuse me Mrs. Handsman. He never had a chance. It happened just a few miles from here.”
“Were you using little FRS radios, like walkie-talkies?” I asked.
“Yeah.” That must have been the “OK” I heard. It was Ryan’s last words to his partner.
“Mr. Handsman?”
“Listen Ryan it’s the end of the world. You can call me Doug.”
“OK. Doug?”
“Yes Ryan.”
“Do you have any toilet paper in here?”
Ruth Ann and I looked at each other blankly. We stocked the garage with a lot of things, but no toilet paper.
“No, we forgot that. There is a box of paperbacks in there. You can rip out the pages. Start with ‘A Clash of Kings.’ Take out a garbage bag to throw your waste in. You’ll only be in there for a day.”
We figured we’d let Ryan do his business. We wanted to know why he left the safety of Door County in the company of a soldier but that would be another time.
Ruth Ann and I went upstairs. She powered up the laptop and accessed the surveillance camera DVR. We could see several undead in the distance scattered in multiple directions. A couple of them were standing still. Frozen in place, it was as if they were hibernating. More were in motion. A few were still heading in our direction and some heading away.
The day’s radio update brought detailed information about the horde that was moving east from the Twin Cities:
‘the central axis of the horde follows Interstate 94. At noon today, the advancing face of the horde passed near Hammond and Baldwin Wisconsin. Thinning operations where local terrain is favorable will continue.
The next operation is scheduled to take place tonight along the Red Cedar River near Menomonie Wisconsin. All persons taking shelter in the area closest to the river or Lake Menomin are advised to relocate away from the waterfront.
All other persons are advised to seek or remain in the strongest shelter available. Persons camped on open ground or in woods are advised to flee northeast towards unpopulated areas. Unreinforced structures can be destroyed. If no suitable shelter can be found, seek high broken ground that is difficult to climb. Bluffs or promontories facing the direction of the oncoming horde are best.
Again, unreinforced structures such as residential buildings may not survive the crushing forces of a passing horde. You are advised to seek shelter on upper floors of reinforced commercial structures or apartment buildings. Destroy staircases below you.
If no suitable shelter can be found, seek high broken ground that is difficult to climb. Bluffs or promontories facing the direction of the oncoming horde are best.”
“They will be here tomorrow afternoon,” Ruth Ann said.
“We’re built like a commercial buildi
ng. In fact, the house is better than most banks. I think we’ll be OK.”
“Two million of those things. Why don’t they just bomb them into the stone age?”
“The horde coming towards us isn’t the only one around. I bet every metropolitan area spawned hordes that big. Or even bigger. The one out of Chicago is what, four million they said? I doubt we have enough men left, bombs, bullets, or fuel to kill them all.”
“What are we supposed to do,” Ruth Ann looked deeply at me.
“Us? We button up tight and keep our heads down. The rest of the country? I have no idea.”
We spent the rest of the day doing chores around the house. Prewar chores like doing laundry were changed in that we used a washboard instead of the washer. We had new chores like refilling ammo clips and making sure anything with a battery was charged during daylight.
We chatted with Ryan a few times but he evaded our questions about why he left the safety of Door County. We did get an answer to something we were curious about. Why didn’t the dead that chased him wander off once he was out of sight on the garage roof? His answer made perfect sense.
“One of them saw me get on the roof and came over. Once it started banging, more came. Every one that makes a commotion attracts more. Once they start banging they keep each other excited. That’s how the hordes start out,” he said.
A critical mass of zombies creates a sustaining reaction. We realized that even one sufficiently motivated zombie could potentially snowball into a horde the size of the one heading straight for us.
Ruth Ann had fixed an early dinner of vegetarian chili with some re-hydrated beans and herbs from the roof. We were sitting down when we heard then felt a return of helicopters. It was unexpectedly loud. They must have been right outside. The security DVR displayed on the laptop on the table. Camera two showed a Blackhawk settling down near the back of the house.
We ran up to the roof. We arrived in time to see a crewman in a flight suit and an enormous helmet jump out of the chopper. He carried a black hard plastic case wrapped in shrink-wrap. In the distance, we could see the dead starting to converge on the giant green noise machine. We couldn’t hear shots but every few seconds a corpse would be rocked backwards by an expert headshot. The crewman ran up our back deck stairs and placed his package near the heavy-duty door after kicking away the bodies of the dead zombies. He looked up at us peering down at him and returned the salute I had given the helicopter crews the night before. Apparently my gesture had made an impression. Just like that, he was off back to the Blackhawk.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 8