Bob and Bob took careful aim and turned the zombie’s lights out, dropping them directly onto the device keeping our lights on.
Bill sent men out to shovel away the drifts at the base of the fence. The drifts made it easier to climb the fence. The snow had stopped, but the wind hadn’t. Drifts returned soon thereafter. Keeping them away from the fence would be a lost cause.
At six twenty, the starkly visible horde of dark on white trampled past Carson Park. We watched tensely on the big screen as it enveloped and crushed what was left of Eau Claire. So far, we saw no activity inside the park so all seemed well for the survivors inside. They would be surrounded for hours to come.
CB2 was now only a few hours away from us.
At six thirty, we saw a flight of helicopters destroy what was left of the eastern causeway between the mainland and the peninsula of the park itself. They left the Carson Park Drive area alone, apparently satisfied with what the survivors had done for themselves.
We topped off the water containers we had been using. Bob Wisnewski swept off the solar panels. The men checked ammunition and weapons.
Bill and I had an early meeting with Frank.
“You can see the drifting snow has made it easier to scale the fence around the generator. The damn thing is attracting the dead like gun shots,” I said.
“Sir, I request permission to disengage the fuel cell generator,” added Bill.
“The request is denied Christmas Tree. The datacenter must remain running for as long as possible. We have serious situations in a number of Administrative Zones that need the results you produce. The hordes are getting hungrier. They are more aggressive if you can imagine that. A number of safe zones are in peril as we speak. Do you understand your orders Lieutenant?”
“Yes sir. Hua.”
I gave up trying to have the generator switched off. In my resignation, I changed subjects.
“Frank, we may not make it through this. There’s one thing I want to know,” I said.
“Walter, there’s no reason to get maudlin. We will keep you safe.”
“No really. We’ve had this Father Goose Frank and Walter code name business going since the beginning. I have to know. What is your real name?”
“Frank.”
“Frank?”
“Frank.”
“Your code name is your real name. Seriously?”
“I never said it was a code name. You were to be Christmas Tree. I told you my name, you came up with ‘Walter,’ I just went with it.”
Off mike, I said to Bill, “You knew about this?”
“Of course. I had no idea why he called you Walter and Ruth Ann Miss Goody Two Shoes. Is Father Goose a movie?” Bill said.
Back on mike I said “Attention all listening stations this is Doug and Ruth Ann Handsman signing off from Christmas Tree. Good night and good luck.”
“That was touching Walter. Sit tight. We’ll talk again. Lambeau Field out.”
Bill and I looked at each other and took a deep breath in. Then he shouted, “Gather up people!”
Bill was joined by his ten men.
“CB2 will be here soon. There are millions of them and the god damned fuel cell thing is going to bring them here like flies on a honey wagon. Our orders are to keep the datacenter running as long as possible. Doing so will save lives,” Bill paused and looked into his troop’s faces.
“To do that, we have to keep the generator on.”
Another pause.
“I want three volunteers to man the roof to keep the generator clear. I don’t have to tell you, you will likely die.”
“I’ll go,” Bob Peretz said.
“You stupid kike, what are you volunteering me for?” said Bob Wisnewski.
“I didn’t volunteer you, you dumb Polack.”
“Sure you did, you know I got your back. Where you go I go.”
“I’m going on the roof,” said Peretz.
“OK man. I got your back.”
“That’s two. I need one more.”
Leon Cremmons, a quiet Specialist I hardly knew was the third volunteer to face a likely death on the roof of Christmas Tree.
“Thank you men. Take whatever you need and dig in up there. Sweep Zeke off the generator but try not to blow it up yourselves. Good luck.”
The doomed three shook hands and said good byes to their brothers. Then they went off to gather gear and headed up stairs.
“Brandt, you’re in the basement. Your job is to protect the gear and specifically that box Mr. Handsman told you about. Whatever you do, that box has to be kept safe, understand?”
No mention of protecting us.
“Hua,” was Brandt’s reply.
“Barry, Orderly, you’re in the basement too. Your job is to keep Mr. and Mrs. Handsman safe. Hua?”
“Hua,” both said.
There’s that, I thought.
Brandt and Clark looked determined. Orderly look relieved.
“Lim, you me and John will stay on the second floor. It won’t be a picnic, the windows are our weak spots. We can fall back to the first floor if need be.”
Lim Zsu, who accompanied Mancheski into the warehouse and John Rentmiesters who also went on the raid would stick by their Lieutenant once again.
“Chuck and Chris, you are in reserve on one. The only way they are getting to the first floor is if the wheels come off the wagon. Your job is to hold the door to the basement and cover us on the way down, got it?”
“Hua,” said Chris Sanders who I didn’t know and Chuck Evans who had been in on the warehouse raid.
“OK, people. Let’s do it.”
The volunteers on the roof were locked out. From here on until their quickly approaching end, they were on their own.
Furniture from the first floor was moved to barriers against the second windows. Only the windows near the generator were covered on the outside with glued plywood. A heavy couch and chair were wedged into the stairway leading to the roof. There really wasn’t a point to barricading the stairway between the first and second floors. Doing so wouldn’t prevent us from being overrun but would hamper any retreat attempt by Bill, Lim and John.
Ruth Ann and I, along with Brandt, Orderly and Barry locked ourselves into the basement. I isolated the well, Internet router, modem and the house camera system to the battery backups. If we lost generator power, while the datacenter would crash instantly, we would still have water, surveillance and two ways of contacting Lambeau. The NAS box containing a complete backup of Christmas Tree was disconnected and ready for bug out.
We watched the satellite view of CB2 as it converged on Christmas Tree from both north and south. Whether drawn by the sound of the generator or just bad luck, CB2 came down on us like a closing pincer.
The remains of our neighbor’s houses to the east and north imploded into their basements under thousands of highly agitated ghouls.
Giant fire balls erupted between Christmas Tree and its neighbors. The mobile artillery made its presence known. High explosives are loud but the sound of the exploding shells did not overpower the sound of the horde itself.
Bob and Bob along with Leon Cremmons opened up on the horde as it easily rose up and over the fence surrounding the fuel cell generator. It was immediately obvious leaving those men up there to die was a complete waste. Nothing would have stopped the generator from being overrun except the stealth provided by being turned off before the horde arrived.
On my laptop, we watched the dead tumble off the top of the generator fence. More and more made it into the tight space between the fence and the generator.
On the other cameras, we could see the dead coming closer and closer to camera level like rising floodwater. They climbed over each other rising towards roof level. Just before the southward facing cameras became blocked by constantly churning darkness we saw them spilling in through the windows on the second floor.
There would be no prolonged heroic siege. Christmas Tree did not stand firm against a raging ocean of
dead. No, we were slammed hard under in the first unstoppable wave.
We heard automatic weapons fire both through the basement door and on the radio. Lim was already dead. John Rentmiesters body checked Bill, tossing him down stairway leading to the first floor.
Evans and Sanders pulled Bill to his feet. For a moment they stood, weapons pointing upward, while the John Rentmiesters assault rifle howled.
I looked down at the laptop screen and saw that bodies were still tumbling off the roof near the generator. The doomed men on the roof were still firing.
Then they were tumbling off the generator itself.
Barely had I breathed “No” the cameras to the rear of the house showed a blinding flash and went dead. The house shook so violently cracks appeared in the basement ceiling. The datacenter went instantly silent.
For a moment, the surviving cameras were clear of writhing bodies. The explosion the generator was so great that zombies were temporarily shaken from their purchase. The two remaining cameras facing westward showed a massive fire. The northwest facing view showed flames billowing out of the second floor windows.
In the few seconds lull afforded by the explosion, Sanders banged on the basement door. Over the radio he said, “Open dammit. We’re coming in.”
Brandt and Clark were at the ready at the top landing. Brandt shouted “Clear!” and push open the door. Bill Mancheski and Chris Sanders tumbled inside at knee level. Over them, Brandt fired his weapon but as he did so, putrid arms grabbed him. They lifted him off his feet, over Mancheski and Sanders. In an instant, Brandt was gone. In the feeding frenzy that erupted, Barry Clark was able to slam the solid door shut and locked it.
Willem. Brandt’s first name was Willem.
Mancheski and Clark carried Sanders down stairs where we could see, by the light of crank driven lanterns, ragged claw marks through Sanders tattered uniform. Sanders, his arms already swollen with bites, lay limply at the bottom of the stairs.
Bill Mancheski stripped quickly. We searched his body for broken skin. He was bruised and dirty with what might have been blood, but it was not his. The shield that was his thin layer of skin had held.
Chris Sanders barely breathed now. His skin was gray.
There was no drama as in the prewar movies and books. Bill, still naked, simply said, “Barry, can I have your sidearm?”
Barry handed his pistol to Bill.
Bill looked at all of us and looked at Chris. Then he fired once into Chris’s head.
Barry and Orderly rolled Chris Sanders’ body into a blanket and dragged it into the now silent machine room.
Bill Mancheski got dressed.
“What is our situation?” he said.
“Cameras at the back of the house are gone. So is the one at the northeast corner. The other cameras are blocked by Zombies. Sometimes daylight pokes through. There are a lot of flames,” I said flatly.
There was no point in asking about Evans.
The banging and clawing at the basement door was intense.
Thinking what we were all thinking, Bill said, “The basement door will hold. The fire will take out the landing’s walls before that door breaks. Does the radio work?”
“Negative,” said Orderly. “The explosion must have destroyed the antenna. We can’t get a signal down here.”
“But we still have an Internet connection,” I said. “Lambeau sees what the cameras see. We should have battery power for a few days.”
“Let’s drop them a line,” Bill said sounding like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Tell them eight KIA and five survivors in the basement. Radio is down. We have food, water and battery reserves. Request immediate rescue.”
I typed and sent the email.
We waited.
Back in the earliest days of email, one girlfriend or another dumped me. I was depressed. I sat at the UNIX shell prompt reentering “mail” repeatedly only to see “no mail” appear each time. I felt like that now. I get clicking on the email refresh button willing a reply to come.
In what seemed like hours but was no more than a few minutes, we got our two-word reply.
“Sit tight.”
After I read this aloud, over the din of the banging, kicking and scraping coming from the basement door Barry Clark expressed his dissatisfaction with the brevity of the answer.
“Sit tight? That’s it? That is all they fucking said?”
“Barry, calm down. What else are we supposed to do? We’re trapped down here. Whether we burn to death, die of thirst, starvation, kill each other, die from smoke inhalation, get crushed or get eaten, we’re not going anywhere,” said Orderly.
Sergeant Orderly looked like he could have continued ticking off ways we could die for another long while. Thankfully, he stopped where he did. Barry flung his arms out in a vigorous “what-the-hell?” motion and sat down. Tight.
The ceiling above us creaked and groaned under the weight of who knows how many zombies crashing about above us. The banging on the door was incessant.
For a moment, body parts cleared from camera four, replaced by fire. Then the feed went dark.
Moments later, there was a rumble like the sound of falling concrete, which in fact it was. Part of the back wall of the house had given way out of view of any of the remaining cameras.
We could smell the odor of burning house quite distinctly now. There is the pleasant smell of a neighbor’s wood fire grill or a fireplace on a winter’s night. There is the pleasant smell of a campfire. Then there is the smell of burning house. It is different. It is not pleasant.
Ruth Ann soaked some towels in water and with Orderly accompanying her to the top landing, placed them at the base of door. When she returned, she told us that the door did not feel warm. Yet.
The smell of smoke did not decrease. In the dim light of our lanterns we could see smoke, dust and small bits of debris drop from the ceiling vents. The air in the basement has to be drawn from somewhere. The growing haze told us the source of what we were breathing.
Email!
This email was as terse as the last.
“Rescue arrives in thirty minutes. Say state.”
After a brief discussion, we sent back:
“Smoke inhalation likely to kill us before then. Hurry.”
There was an attachment to the email we received. I opened it up and saw that it was a reasonably close up aerial view of Christmas Tree. Above us somewhere, out of reach, somebody was looking over the carnage. The picture showed too many creatures to count. Flames emanated from the rear of the house and the northeast corner had indeed caved in.
There were dark gaps in the fire, which, when I zoomed in, were roasting zombies. Everywhere there were zombies packed more tightly than any living human could tolerate.
“Rescue? How can they get us out of a burning building in the middle of a horde? How is that possible?” Ruth Ann said.
There was no need to speak in hushed tones in face of the din thundering from upstairs.
“Now that the fuel cell system isn’t drawing them to us anymore the crowd here at the house should go down,” I said hopefully.
Indeed, I could see daylight more often in the cameras that were still operational. The crush of bodies climbing over themselves to get to us was thinning out.
The pounding on the basement door continued mercilessly as did the groaning of the ceiling above us. The dead howled and roared. We could hear the hum of the fire.
“We have to stop the smoke from coming down here,” Barry said.
“But we can’t seal up the vents completely, we need air,” Bill added. “The vent over there is furthest from the fire. Do you have more cloth to cover the rest?”
“Yeah, Barry, help me get down some sheets and soak them in the sink,” Ruth Ann rose.
While they did that, I told Bill about one more way we could die.
“You know the door area isn’t their only way in. If the fire penetrates the first floor anywhere, we’ll be a
soft chewy snack.”
“I know. Nothing we can do about it.”
Barry and Ruth Ann returned with the white soaked sheets, hammer, and nails. They went to each of the vents closest to the fire and covered them.
Orderly stood watch at the bottom of the basement stairs.
We waited.
Ruth Ann kept the sheets covering the vents wet. They sagged and got darker by the minute.
It was getting hard to breath.
The cameras were clear of writhing bodies now, though covered with dirt, pus and who knows what else. We were still in the middle of a horde but its members were now slowly milling past us rather than over us.
The noise from the zombies inside the house lessened. Maybe the fire that would soon suffocate us or open a hole in the landing or first floor for the horde to pour in, was consuming them. We did not know.
I was feeling woozy.
The sound at the stairway seemed to get louder. The three soldiers moved into position at the bottom of the stairs. The foundation started shaking. Through the cameras, I could see high explosives ring the house in a circle at the limits of the camera’s sight.
Suddenly the men’s radios came alive. Rescue was dropping out of the sky above us.
No sooner did the radios erupt, sheetrock that used to form one wall of the stairway broke apart and fell. The shards of sheetrock were on fire as were the zombies that dropped into the stairwell with them.
The soldiers opened up with everything they had.
I don’t know if it was the cumulative stress, the deafening noise, oxygen deprivation or what, I felt myself slipping away. Rescue was now or…
The right side of my face was pushed against a wall. Somebody was yelling at me to do something. I could not tell what it was.
My hearing wasn’t working right.
The fog lifted enough for me to realize we were in the short vestibule leading to the inner garage door on the right and the laundry room on the left. Despite my confusion, I saw the inner garage door was missing. If light was coming through the door, I thought, the door should be swung open into the house. It wasn’t there. That was strange.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 20