Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel

by Perry Kivolowitz

  The snowmen near our house represented an opportunity to relieve some of the stress the last few days had induced. Ruth Ann’s love of all things that fire projectiles included paintball. We had a CO2 paintball rifle with a store of cylinders and the paintballs themselves. We discussed having this bit of fun including its ramifications. We decided that a paintball rifle wouldn’t be loud enough to pose much of a risk of attracting zombies from far and wide.

  Just the same, Ruth Ann would forego her turns with the paintball rifle. Instead, she would be ready with her recurve bow to dispatch any snow cones that started making too much noise. Ryan, of course, already knew how to fire the paintball rifle but I needed instructions from Ruth Ann.

  Pop! Ryan landed a bright magenta splotch on the shoulder blade of a statue on the house’s southeast side near where we had shot the looters. The impact of the paintball jerked the ghoul to its front. It spun quickly around and growled in the direction the shot had come. It scanned left and right at its eye’s level never lifting its head to explore what might be found above it. It shifted into that constant moaning that anyone who has heard never wants to hear again. It shambled off towards the back of the house and kept right on going now that it had been activated.

  Emboldened by our success without apparent penalty, I took the next shot at a snow-covered ghoul. This one faced directly at our firing location but its eyes were obscured by snow. With beginner’s luck on my side, I exploded a bright blue paintball directly into its face. The impact of the paintball removed the accumulated snow from its eyes which flashed upwards right at me while I was still visible admiring my shot.

  The creature roared and moved with purpose towards the house. Ruth Ann nocked her bow, drew and put an arrow between the creature’s eyes. It fell cleanly backwards with its arms outstretched. Momentum from the fall brought its arms to rest spread eagle. There was now a snow angel with a bright blue face on my lawn.

  The snow angel’s roar brought two walkers in our direction. Ryan took his turn, putting the paintball rifle on automatic. Letting the first howling walker get closer, he made modern art on the creature’s torso and face.

  More creatures started in our direction. The adult in me decided this is where the fun was transitioning to the part where you get the sharp stick in the eye. The adult in me was overruled by the stressed out me that needed just a bit more release. I sprayed the second ghoul on automatic making the two coming towards us some kind of animated diptych.

  “OK, we better stop. We’ve had our fun,” the adult using my voice said.

  “That was great!” Ryan said too loudly.

  Ruth Ann’s contribution to the discussion was two quick bowshots, putting the natty pair down with holes in their heads.

  We quietly got down off the roof. Once down to the second floor we made hot chocolate and tea. We felt a bit of relief from the horrors of a horde passing through our yard. With the cold weather and lack of continued stimulation, the group that accumulated at our house slowly wandered away or deactivated into statues.

  On Wednesday (Day 35), a number of Blackhawks arrived. The first two erupted with combat teams upon setting down. The troops began methodically eliminating all of the undead in the area. We did not hear any shots from their suppressed weapons. Their teams moved like water rushing downhill pausing in one spot only long enough to place aimed fire on groups of undead. They took out individual zombies while on the move without breaking stride.

  When they came upon a home that was compromised, they simply laid charges around its periphery, fired M203 grenades in through whatever breach the ghouls had made and blew the house up. Anything that moved was shot. There was no sense in risking lives on clearing tight spaces. It occurred to me that I had designed my home to survive the others in the neighborhood. I thought it would be acts of nature that brought them down not explosives.

  A third Blackhawk disgorged a smaller combat team that swept into the Boetche’s house. In less than a minute, they confirmed its contents were secure. A large twin rotor helicopter landed next to the house. A crew went inside and then shortly came out again carting bales of dope and boxes of equipment. Before the outbreak, this sort of scene would appear on the news from time to time with DEA emblazoned in big letters on the chests and backs of law enforcement. Now instead of a crime, it was a weed rescue mission.

  With a short but earnest goodbye, Ryan left on the cargo chopper.

  After clearing an extended area of undead, one of the first two teams set up a protective perimeter around us. The other team used bailing hooks to make a pile of undead from those killed in the area of our house. They set the pile ablaze. The stink was terrible. The smoking pyre destroyed what was left of the illusion of normalcy the snow had brought.

  More cargo helicopters arrived. One suspended what looked like a steel shipping container under it. Another suspended a pallet carrying a Bobcat with various doodads attached. A third cargo helicopter landed first. Crewmembers jumped out and guided the soft touchdown of the suspended cargo carried by the other two.

  The shipping container was put down near where our deck used to be, very close and parallel to the house. After laying down their loads both choppers that carried the heavy cargo departed without landing.

  The ramp door of the remaining cargo helicopter came down and men walked out with 4x8 sheets of thick plywood. They set the wood down at the front door. Other men set up a portable table saw and small gas powered generator. With a hook, they pulled the dead ghoul out of the front door’s sidelight and added it to the pyre that was still roaring with flame. They cut and screwed the plywood completely over my front entry way then added metal gussets anchoring the wood to the concrete further reinforcing the heavy sheets.

  Meanwhile, the Bobcat removed pallets of heavy metal fencing from the belly of the remaining cargo chopper. Men went to work on the shipping container that housed a complete fuel cell electrical generator powered by natural gas. The system was of modest size incorporating fuel storage, the fuel cell system itself and the electrical glue necessary to convert the output of the container to levels compatible with the input of the house.

  All told, the fuel cell system could provide fifty times the capacity of our solar panels with enough natural gas to run a month. Workers tied the output of the fuel cell to the input of the house so to us, it was like being reconnected to the grid again. As a bonus, we could continue using our rooftop panels at the same time to keep our batteries conditioned and charged. We would have enough electricity to run the servers in the basement plus heaters, a refrigerator, freezer, microwave and coffee maker all at the same time!

  The fuel cell system had the capacity to heat water as a byproduct, but the work involved in ducting and piping was deemed frivolous. Hot showers would not return to Christmas Tree. Can’t have everything.

  The heavy metal fencing was anchored to the concrete of the walls of my house. Then sections were linked together with pins. Then the pins and gaps between the sections were welded. Buttresses extended to the inside of the fence giving it increased resistance from outside forces pushing inward. I was not happy having something that zombies could climb so close to the house but they seemed to know what they were doing.

  Finally, a sloped metal cage was placed over the cleared off top of our wellhead. Frank’s people, who knew our house’s weaknesses from watching the TC horde come through, were thinking of everything.

  When construction was done for the day, the cargo helicopter attached the Bobcat to fly it, and the construction crews back to Door County. It was then that I made believe I was exercising my (suspended) third amendment rights. The third amendment guarantees that no troops can be quartered in private homes without the owner’s consent.

  A full squad of soldiers assembled near my garage door. After numerous assurances that the virus was no longer transmittable via proximity, we admitted eleven heavily armed infantrymen into Camp Christmas Tree. Not all of the men were strangers. Lieutenant Mancheski, the
Guardsman we declined to go with almost three weeks before shook our hands as he brought his people in. A Staff Sergeant named Orderly presented Ruth Ann with two washed mason jars with her hand written “strawberry” still visible. “It went fast ma’am. We didn’t know if you needed the jars back. I’m sorry about the other two jars. We lost them but not without a fight.”

  Ruth Ann was genuinely touched. She thanked Sergeant Orderly for returning the jars. A short time before two glass jars would not be worth the effort to carry back. Now however…

  Lieutenant Mancheski handed me an envelope. Inside was a signed contract with the terms I had specified.

  The men began to make themselves comfortable in the bedrooms and den on our first floor. With ample electricity, water was not a problem. The soldiers came supplied with food. Periodic resupply was part of the deal.

  They pulled Ryan’s 4x4 out of our garage and parked it in the Boetche’s garage. They set up a more comfortable sleeping area in the vacated space. Lt. Mancheski explained this would be used as a quarantine area if one proved necessary. Until used for that purpose, the garage’s back door would serve as the main entrance and egress point for the house.

  He defined a duty schedule that put four soldiers on our roof twenty-four hours a day. A fifth would keep watch of the security cameras and monitor the radio.

  Lt. Mancheski asked if there was anything his men could do for us. It didn’t take much thought. Both Ruth Ann and I answered we wanted to go out for a long walk! The Lieutenant said that could be arranged for the next day. The remainder of this day needed to be spent on setting up and settling in.

  I took Lt. Mancheski, Sgt. Orderly and the squad’s tech person Specialist Brandt for a complete tour of the house instructing them on each of the system’s operation and capability. They were quite satisfied with the house’s defensibility especially under a state of siege.

  SPC Brandt correctly pointed out that for all my concern about survivability, I had no way to protect the vital assets I had on the roof: the solar array and greenhouse.

  “Ah, that,” I said. “I considered them expendable. Their only protection is a homeowner’s insurance policy. Not that that would do much good anymore.”

  “I resemble that remark Mr. Handsman,” said the Lieutenant. “Before this I worked out of the office that serviced your policy. So, in a roundabout way, we still have you covered.”

  “Small world! If I recall correctly my policy premium would have been due about now. Would you accept payment in the form of brandied pears? You’ve had Ruth Ann’s jam, the pears are even better.”

  Sgt. Orderly shook like an excited kid and said, “LT please say yes.”

  “As I am temporarily out of touch with the home office, I’m sure we can work out an arrangement,” he said with a smile.

  “Good. Now show me this nuclear reactor you guys installed.”

  Orderly thought I was serious and said, “It’s a fuel cell system Mr. Handsman, there are no nuclear things in there.”

  When we had exited the back door, I heard sounds emanating from the machine. There was both a 60-cycle noise common to generators and high-pitched hissing. I commented on the hissing.

  Specialist Brandt said, “That’s the sound of the natural gas working through from its tanks through the system.”

  “Isn’t that pretty loud? It isn’t going to attract any zombies?”

  “We don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean think so? Haven’t you tried this before?”

  “Actually, no sir. This is the first time we have deployed a unit of this kind in the open field.”

  “Great.” Be careful what you wish for, I thought to myself.

  We made our way inside and broke open some brandied pears. A number of jars actually. Being the caring soul that my stone cold executioner wife is, she made paper plates full for the troops on the roof.

  That evening I fired up the servers and confirmed connectivity with Lambeau Field. Our connection speed was phenomenal with minimal latency. The first items on my “to do” list included setting up a means of communicating with not only Frank but also the people I would ostensibly be supervising. A secure email account that Frank’s people provided took only a moment to setup. I fired up an enterprise collaboration server that would let me host live meetings with “my people.” However, I never did get the damn thing working correctly. We ended up using only email.

  Among the first emails I received were instructions on how to tie into a feed of high-resolution satellite imagery covering the Midwestern Administrative Zone. The first project I would be working on needed these. I arranged to pull down new set of high-res images every fifteen minutes. I would begin writing code to process these images soon. For tonight however, Ruth Ann and I simply looked at them, one stream in visible light and one in infrared.

  Being nighttime, the visual light images showed very little, far less than they used to. There were giant expanses of darkness that were once lit by human activity. The infrared images showed fairly little as well. Residual heat from the day mostly. There were some bright spots in the pictures. These were recent fires or possibly small encampments of humans. Door County shone very brightly. There was even a glow around my house, which I found by latitude and longitude.

  The hordes did not show up to the naked eye in the infrared stream but I was told it would be possible to spot them using computer code to identify their minor difference from the background. Spotting them at night was some of the code I was asked to write.

  Thursday (Day 36), was the start of a new phase in our survival story. My house was now a military installation of sorts officially called Camp Christmas Tree named after how we lit of the night with our infrared floodlights. Ruth Ann and I had our own squad of hardened zombie killers to protect us. This morning, we went for a walk.

  Ruth Ann and I talked with the Lieutenant and Sgt. Orderly. As we chit chatted about this and that they politely kept their automatic weapons pointed in another direction. Fifteen yards away from us, spread like the cardinal points on a compass were four more soldiers armed more heavily than those beside us.

  The sound of soft snow crunching underfoot and quiet but lively conversation intermingled with an occasional moan followed by the exhale of a suppressed assault rifle.

  It was quite idyllic really.

  Our companions told us of their escape from the fallen safe zone at Chippewa Valley Regional Airport a little more than two weeks before.

  “At first we really thought we could pick a spot of ground and hold it. Come on, bullets and bombs against fingernails and teeth? Where’s the challenge in that?” Lieutenant Mancheski began.

  “We even went out on patrols looking for them when all we had to do was ring a dinner bell and they’d find us. Stealth wasn’t an option for us like you have here. We had too many people at the airport to keep hidden.”

  “Puh.” I saw the soldier to our right lower his suppressed rifle. I did not see the undead he just put down, lost in a row of evergreens ahead of us.

  “Dispatchers from the local law enforcement branches did a great job of keeping our patrols in places with escape routes and where we could support each other. One weakness in this was that the dispatch centers were too far apart and their buildings too large to defend. When we lost them, one by one, we lost our command and control. The patrols had to stop. Offense with our limited resources was out of the question,” he continued.

  “Orderly here was on one of the last patrols. They were literally chased back into our perimeter.”

  “We had .50 cals on Humvees. We had our weapons and side arms but not a single suppressed weapon between us. Every time we nailed one son of a bitch, the noise brought another ten to take its place. Sometimes we made it back to the safe zone with a round still left in the chamber, sometimes we didn’t. That last time, we came back empty and winded,” the Sargent added. “It was frustrating. Every time out, more of them. Less of us.”

  “The worst were t
he people in the safe zone who got sick. At first, we pulled them away from their families to put them down. After a while, we could not risk even that. We executed parents and children in front of each other,” the Lieutenant’s voice cracked a little. His eyes were fixed on the horizon.

  “Puh.”

  “When it was clear that we couldn’t hold our line we had about eighteen hours that we could fly people out on small planes. It was like the English at Dunkirk. Little planes as few as three passengers at a time. The biggest plane, Orderly, what was it like five passengers plus the pilot?” Orderly nodded.

  “We had three Gatling guns dropped in. We could have used more but that’s all we could get. Three couldn’t cover all of both of runways, so the planes had to climb out or land in shorter and shorter lengths. Then we couldn’t hold even that. We continued the evac with choppers but soon we couldn’t hold the clear patch off 90th street,” Mancheski went on.

  “We started moving people across the river but we didn’t have enough boats. We strung ropes across the river to help people swim across. We used what boats we had for the little kids and elderly and to catch people downstream who couldn’t hold on. Choppers on the other side lifted all the civilians out in the end.”

  “If the other side of the river wasn’t just farms, we’d have been overrun for sure,” Orderly said. “The road trip to Door County was no picnic. We had to go north around the bigger cities and come down on 43 to cross the Fox River. Going through Green Bay was awful. We kept the lake to our left and air cover made the difference on the right. We’d be walkers too if it weren’t for that.”

  “Puh.”

  A Blackhawk landing back at the house told us it was time to head home. Some workers had arrived to finish yesterday’s miraculous conversion of our house into Camp Christmas Tree.

  When we got back, it was work time for me too. The first project to work on would to be hosted on my traditional Linux servers. The ex-financial programmers in Door County worked for some of Wisconsin’s well-known insurance companies. They were experts in the field of optimization.