I toddled off leaving Ruth Ann to make sweet love to her rifle.
I found Lieutenant Mancheski at the back of the house by the fuel cell generator. He, and several of his men, were looking into whatever could be done to silence what we thought was attracting the dead in a near continual dribble of ones and twos. The snipers on the roof kept walkers from encroaching upon the enclosed area surrounding the generator.
The bodies already spread around the fence were not uniformly distributed. Most lay nearest the spot where the natural gas used as a catalyst fed into the fuel cell itself. There was a distinct high-pitched hissing sound there. Bill had sent a pair of men out into the backyard to see how far the sound carried. Both reported they could no longer hear the sound a mere ten yards away.
Yet, the troops sent out on the home supply warehouse raid reported zombies walking with purpose in the direction of Christmas Tree from half a mile away.
Barry Clark, one of the men from the raid said “It has to be the hissing LT.”
“That’s the best lead we have. Hell, the hissing is the only lead we have. Lambeau has been no help at all,” Mancheski said.
“When theaters in the home were first getting big…” I began.
“You mean home theaters?” interrupted Barry.
“You might mean home theater; I mean theaters in the home. This was California, after all. Anyway, an important step was sound absorbing blankets in the walls, floor and ceiling. They are dense felt blankets that are used like insulation only for sound,” I said.
“And…” said Bill.
“I don’t have any sound absorbing blankets on hand, but I do have insulation. You can send one of your men into the attic crawl space and bring some down. We might lose a little heat this winter, but it won’t matter if we’re dead.”
“Barry, take Evans and pull down enough batting to wrap this whole section.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’ll show you where the attic access is.” I showed the two soldiers up to the second floor where, in a hallway ceiling there was an access panel leading to the crawl space above.
Soon the men had pulled down about eighty linear feet of insulation, enough to wrap several times over the area of pipes and tubes we believed was the corpse magnet.
Before the men applied the insulation I wanted to give the area one more sniff for leaking natural gas. I nosed around the area and smelled nothing but Barry Clark’s body odor. That says a lot considering there were rotting zombies only a few feet away, but then again, they were well chilled.
Barry, on the other hand, had reached his “full flavor bouquet.”
We had not had much snow since the day after the Twin Cities horde walked through Christmas Tree. The clouds filling in overhead suggested we’d get more snow soon. In fact, while I stood there watching the men wrap the insulation around the pipes, a few flakes began to fall.
It occurred to me that between the insulation now surrounding the natural gas pipes and the snow that was surely going to accumulate on the batting, if there was a gas leak there, it would make a nicely contained volume of gas. Enough to make a big boom. I dismissed this however as I had a sensitive nose and neither myself nor any of the men smelled gas when we poked around this area smelling for leaks.
At eleven, Bill and I had our meeting with Frank.
“Thanks for getting all those backups to us Walter. Your people here tell me you were very thorough.”
“They found the build and deployment instructions I wrote?” I was as solicitous as could be without reaching through the radio and nibbling on Frank’s ears.
“I don’t know what that means, but your people seemed happy. You’ll be glad to know more resources are coming back online to help out in the event Christmas Tree needs evacuation.”
“But the plan is till to hold tight, keep the datacenter running and hope CB2 passes us by?”
“Correct, that is still the plan. The battalion of self-propelled guns Lt. Mancheski requested has moved into position eleven miles south of you. They will be in touch with you later today to dial in their guns. Lieutenant, expect to hear from White Mountain Six, understood?”
“Heard and understood sir.”
“Frank, this morning Mrs. Christmas Tree and I saw earth movers operating in Carson Park in Eau Claire. Do you know about an encampment there?”
“Hold Walter,” Frank was probably bringing up maps.
“Carson Park, you say? No Walter, we have no knowledge of an encampment there. I wonder how they survived the thinning operations over Eau Claire.”
“Do you have a current high resolution shot of the area in front of you?”
“I do now.”
“OK. Look at Carson Park Drive as it starts into the park. You should see it being interrupted by an earthen embankment and the road in is cut. See that?”
“Yes I do. Pretty smart. The horde could pass them by. We figure CB2 will be on their position around 6 AM.”
“That’s what I estimate as well. Now look north northeast about five hundred yards. In the trees. You see the earth movers?”
“Got them Christmas Tree. If we bomb there again we will try to avoid Carson Park. Looks like we already demolished the little causeway leading to the park from the eastern side.”
“I was thinking maybe you could swing by them sometime and drop supplies. Or maybe even pick them up when you get a chance.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.”
“Something else I was thinking about.”
“Yes…”
“We shouldn’t have missed spotting them in the first place. The optimizers take in multiple high-resolution captures to measure size, speed and direction of the hordes. It would not be hard to extend my part of the code to look for infrared signatures indicating small fires at night. I’m sure we could find a lot of survivors that way. I’d like to add that feature after CB2 passes by or we’re evacuated.”
Nudge, nudge.
I continued, “So it is OK with you if I just keep existing things running until after CB2 passes? I can keep up with my people by email to keep them making progress but for me I don’t think I can wrap my head around new coding right now.”
“It’s a good idea Walter. One more time you are ahead of the curve for us. Finding isolated survivors will rise in priority as the security of the established safe zones becomes more certain.”
“Speaking of that, how are things looking for you in Door County?”
“Good. Things are looking good. We have a solid defensive line set up including all the mobile pill boxes the command authority can spare. Demolition charges are strategically placed throughout Green Bay and the bridges across the Fox River to help direct the horde’s flow if it notices us. We’re still hopeful they will flow past us to the west and through Green Bay proper.”
“I hope all the entrances to the real Lambeau are shut tight.”
“They are. We sent teams in there to ensure that facility was secured. Once this is over Packer football will return to Green Bay. The rumors are that the Bears will share Lambeau while Chicago is decontaminated. Reconnaissance flights over Chicago still show considerable activity in the city. Even inside Soldier Field.”
“Bears being the home team in Lambeau? I would rather share the stadium with zombies.”
“Walter…”
“Yes Frank.”
“I’m from Chicago.”
“My condolences to you.”
Over lunch, we listened to the public broadcast from Lambeau. Steady progress had been made in Puerto Rico since I last wrote about the world beyond Christmas Tree. As I said at the outset of this book, other authors can provide more details about the larger world than I.
What makes today special is that the first session of the reconstituted United States Senate was held in the nation’s new Capitol. The House of Representatives couldn’t meet because no one can agree on how many representatives should be allotted to each state. Ruth Ann’s Mendocino Mind Fuck f
ueled prediction of a demographic and population change taking place, because of the apocalypse, was coming true.
Even as Conservatives appeared to be cementing power, one of the cornerstones of their delusion, religion, was taking a beating. A newly minted Senator from Texas wanted a statement of thanks to God for preserving the Union read into the record. He was shouted down and, borrowing from a lesson on decorum from the South Korean National Assembly, was pelted with (full) water bottles and trash.
Apparently, people were waking up to the idea that God couldn’t be thanked without taking the blame for the horrific events of the past six weeks. God’s get-out-jail-free card had been suspended at least for a while.
My own thought was, why should we believe reconstituting the Senate was something worth being thankful for in the first place?
The news segment closed with the announcement that hearings into the Benghazi embassy attack would resume.
Changing the members of the Senate, changing the location of the Senate, killing hundreds of millions of constituents of the Senate could not change the ideology of the Senate. Back to square gridlock.
At one in the afternoon Bill Mancheski invited Ruth Ann and I up to our roof to observe “something really cool.” When we arrived, Bill was talking into his personal radio. Bill handed Ruth Ann and I each a Kevlar helmet borrowed from the men who were off duty.
He said, “Just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked.
As the words left my lips an enormous burst of colored smoke appeared near where the Xian’s house had stood.
“White Mountain Six, this is Christmas Tree Six. Correction twenty meters east, ten meters south.”
I thought I heard something sharp coming through the softly falling snow.
Another giant ball of colored smoke appeared directly over the wreckage of Xian’s house.
“White Mountain Six, this is Christmas Tree Six. Mark last shot two houses north one block east of Christmas Tree.” Bill said to the other end of the conversation.
He listened then motioned for us to move to the eastern facing parapet wall and get down lower.
In a moment I heard the sound I heard before only more clearly. Sort of like a quickly repeated crack of a baseball bat.
An enormous burst of colored smoke burst over the wreckage of Olson’s house directly east of us.
“White Mountain Six, you are dialed in,” Bill said. Then he listened for a moment then nodded his head.
“We hope we don’t need you too. Christmas Tree Six out.”
Bill turned to us and said, “Cool huh? They’re eleven miles away.”
“How can they be so accurate over the distance? How do they account for wind variations?” asked Ruth Ann.
“They use a variant of PFM,” Bill said in reply.
“PFM?”
“Pure Magic. I am completely satisfied knowing they can be that accurate. I don’t really care how.”
“What is the variation?” I stupidly said.
“The missing letter F,” said Bill.
I should have seen that coming.
“How is artillery going to be useful to us?” said Ruth Ann.
“I don’t know. It may help to burn what’s left of your neighbor’s houses.”
With the exception of the Boetch’s house to our west, all of the homes nearby were breached, either by looters, or by the undead or by looters and the undead. Any home that showed a sign of having been breached had been demolished by Bill’s squad or the other team that arrived one week before.
“Or, maybe shrouding us in smoke might help. I won’t know until I know,” Bill finished.
“I wish Frank would be forthcoming with details about the resources he has available for us should things go south here,” Ruth Ann said.
“He mentioned assets from the North Western Administrative Zone would be shifted our way. Do you know thing more about that Bill?”
I said this with a sideways glance at Bill Mancheski. Apart from a willingness to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger if ordered to do so, Bill hadn’t given me any reason to believe he wasn’t playing straight with us. Then again, Brandt hadn’t given me any cause to doubt him either.
“I heard Lambeau welcome two flights of gunships from North Dakota into their command and control net.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Yes, they are using Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport as a base of operations.”
“Where is that exactly?”
I felt like I was talking to Ryan Boetch again. If Bill used the word “fine,” I swear I would have put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. No offense to Bill intended.
Bill shrugged and said “Minnesota.”
I made a beeline to my laptop. On it, I had a travel-planning package with good maps. All I needed was the latitude and longitude of the airport and I would be able to figure out how far away they are. Maybe I’d even get a look at their hardware from a satellite view.
Go figure, I found Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport near Brainerd, in central Minnesota. The small airport was a little over 150 miles from Christmas Tree.
I pulled up a current high-resolution satellite image of the area and saw no military hardware of any kind. There was a helipad and hangars but nothing else. The only thing suggestive of any presence by anyone was that all of the aviation fuel trucks I could see were gathered near the larger hangars at the main runway. There was more than enough room in front of the building to launch and land many helicopters.
“I hope there is somebody in there,” Ruth Ann said over my shoulder.
“Me too. They are close enough. That’s good.”
Preparations inside the house were relatively little. To sum up, there was nothing we could do to shore up defenses inside Christmas Tree.
If we lost the second floor, there was no way to hold the first floor with just open plan staircases between them. Knowing this to be true did not make me feel any better as I watched explosive charges being wired to the stairs.
Ruth Ann directed two soldiers in stockpiling supplies in the basement. There were already stores of emergency food and canned goods down there, though the home canned delicacies such as strawberry jam were all but gone.
As electricity might fail and with it the water pump after my own batteries gave out, anything that could contain water was brought down stairs and filled.
I took Brandt into the machine room for “last instructions.” Brandt was to be stationed in the basement along with Ruth Ann and I to defend us or the machines, I don’t know which.
“I backed everything up to Lambeau this morning so this shouldn’t be important. But, just in case, the one thing in this room you should care about taking out of here is this box right here.”
I pointed to one of the two Networked Attached Storage boxes, about the size of a four small loaves of bread stacked two by two.
“This box has a complete copy of the backup I sent this morning. It is off, disconnected and ready to go. This box. Not that one. OK?”
“Got it. This one, not that one.” Brandt took out a small roll of tape from one of the hundreds of little pockets the soldiers seemed to have. He stuck a strip of tape on the correct box making it visibly different from its twin.
“I showed you this when you got here but it wouldn’t hurt to show you again. This is the switch from the mains to battery power. If, …”
“We lose the generator, throw that switch if it doesn’t switch automatically,” Brandt interrupted.
“The machines will cut out when, sorry, if the generator cuts out. The Internet will still be live, as will the cameras. They run off the batteries. If we lose the solar panels and the generator, we have to use hand-cranked devices as much as possible. At minimal consumption, we have enough batteries to last a week. Then we are blind and dry with hand cranked devices only.”
At least we would have lights and a radio. Brandt had finished bringing the tactical radio into the basemen
t and rigging a means of getting the external antenna outside the house. I did not ask nor did I want to know how he breached my precious concrete walls.
Ruth Ann had gone up to the roof with Bill.
“Do you believe for a minute that the horde won’t pile up enough bodies to reach the roof?” said Ruth Ann.
“No. You are right Mrs. Handsman. The fuel cell is just a step from the side of the house. If they pile on top of each other enough to get over the fence, they will definitely get onto the top of the generator then hoist themselves onto the roof.”
“Yet you won’t board up the roof door. There are no physical barriers between the roof door all the way downstairs to the basement door.”
“My orders are to keep the datacenter running as long as possible. To do that I need men on the roof keeping Zeke off the generator. The men have to have a way down. We can rig the stairways to blow.”
“That works when zombies are below you Bill, not for zombies above you. Doug and I saw zombies fall out of the Flynn’s deck door to the ground and get right back up. They’ll drop right through like lemmings over a cliff, only they won’t die when the hit the bottom.”
“Those are my orders. Keep the datacenter running.”
“At least take the second hasp from the front door and put it up here on the roof.”
“I’ll do that. The front door isn’t going to budge.”
Bill made it so.
We spent the rest of the day in nervous boredom. I watched the horde advance. The soldiers cleaned and checked their weapons. I asked Barry Clark to take a long shower.
The day had finally come. Thursday (Day 43), we all rose early and had a substantial breakfast of dried eggs and cereal with powdered milk. We simulated toast with saltine crackers and used home canned pumpkin butter.
A heavy snow had continued during the night covering everything. Winds had caused drifts of snow up against the fence enclosing the fuel cell system.
Several dead, who had escaped the terminal welcome offered by our snipers during the night, had already climbed the fence. We found them at first light slowly grabbing into the space between the natural gas tanks and the generator itself. The Specialist on camera duty had not seen them breach our defense due to the snow.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 19