ZWD: King of an Empty City

by Thomas Kroepfl

  When the burritos were ready, we sat down to breakfast huddled around the hibachi and its faint heat. I did the mental checklist on the tools we’d need to take decks apart. We had everything. We talked about taking apart the little deck next door to Tommy and John’s house first because it was closest. When it got time to gather dirt after building them, I planned on using the Pages’ Ford F-150 to haul a bunch to the back of the building. I still had to come up with a pulley system to haul it up with, but I had to build the boxes first. Because I was stiff and sleepy I was in no rush to start taking apart a deck. I guess we’d sat there for half an hour eating the burritos and a can of fruit when we heard a lot of gunshots.

  It sounded like a small war coming from the east. With binoculars we tried to see what might have been going on, but it was all out of sight. The shots dwindled down to just a few, and then they stopped. She went to get her gloves from the tent and I stayed at the edge of the roof watching. It wasn’t long till I saw the three hunters walking back. There was something wrong with their gait. They were stiff, not joking. Their guns were slung all wrong for men who looked like they knew how to carry a gun.

  Through the binoculars I could see why. They’d been turned. They were shot in the chest and bitten. They were zombies. I couldn’t imagine what happened to them. They must have panicked and started shooting each other. Perhaps they got themselves surrounded and in a panic hit one another then got overrun. That was all I could come up with. Now they were well-armed zombies.

  Nothing like a killing to start the day. I knew I had to kill them and I wanted those guns. But what drove me into action was when one of them turned his head and looked straight at me. I wasted no time. I had the bow in a moment and fired, missing them completely. They all looked at the arrow sticking in the ground between them. I turned to the tent. “Shoot them,” I said as I grabbed Harold and headed for the electrified ladder. Clicking the fob on the way, I made sure the rope lights around the tent door were off before I touched the thing. A moment later found me on the ground running for the zombie hunters. Two of them had arrows in their heads when I got there. The last one was staring up at her with what almost looked like anger on his face. When he heard me coming he turned towards me and pointed up at her like he was blaming her for killing his friends. With a running swing I took off his head. He fell to the ground and blood oozed out of his neck. For good measure, I took the heads of the other two off.

  After going through their pockets, I took all the ammo I could find, the pistol, and their IDs. They still carried their wallets; one of them I glanced at was named Wallace. I didn’t get to read much more when she cried out, “Hi-Oh” like the kids from the other night. Coming up the road was a herd of zombies. I guess they were following their last meal, wanting more. It was more than I wanted to kill today, or at least at that moment. Taking the rifles, I headed to the U.S. Drug Store. Since I was in the herd’s line of sight, I wanted to draw them away from the roof entrance. I left the heads of those three over there against the wall; I thought she’d want to place them with the others at the cemetery. I could always come back for them.

  Circling around the building, I crossed Main Street and hid in the bushes of the house on the corner. The guns were cumbersome so I stashed them there and settled down, hoping they didn’t notice me.

  I held my breath. One stopped in front of the bushes. I think it heard me take a deep breath.

  It started moving forward and I let the breath out as slowly as I could. There’s just one problem with letting your breath out slowly. You really want to breathe because your body is screaming for oxygen. Controlling that when you’re not a swimmer and your life depends on it is impossible.

  At the bottom of that first inhale I parted my lips a little so I’d have more air coming into my lungs and I held it.

  All I could see was these damned things’ legs as they moved past me. A branch was sticking me in the neck, which didn’t help me in trying to hold my breath, and I couldn’t very well move to get it out of my neck without shaking the bush.

  I started to get a little dizzy from holding my breath and let it out much faster than I’d intended. Two zombies stopped in front of me. A third one bumped into them and the first one fell. I curled my lips into my mouth and forgot breathing all together. My hand slid down my body to one of my knives. His head was facing away from me. The other two moved past him with the herd. As he struggled to get to his feet I pulled the knife from my belt. The zombie sniffed the air a few times and as he was about to turn his head my direction, another passing zombie kicked his far hand from under him, causing him to tumble back to the ground. I eased backwards from within the bush to the back edge, ready to run. The zombie cried out and struggled to his feet and moved towards the zombie that had kicked his hand from under him. It was almost as if somewhere in his brain was the memory of being tripped and he was angrily going to chase the guy down and fight him.

  It took forever, but they finally shambled past me. None of them noticed and I don’t think I’ve ever held my breath that long before in my life. They traveled west on Seventeenth and disappeared in a few minutes. I heard a high-pitched whistle and looked up; she was waving the all-clear from the roof. She’d been watching the whole time through the binoculars. With guns in hand, I went back to the roof.

  It didn’t take long to see why these guys lost their fight. One box of shells didn’t go to any of the rifles they had. There were hardly any shells in the other boxes, so they probably either fired them all or I missed some in their pockets. A quick trip down there and I found none, they’d fired them all. We had probably nine rounds for all four guns, including a .357 pistol that had three rounds in it. A fucking hand cannon and these guys lost the fight. It gave me comfort in the weapons we’d been using, primitive but effective.

  We decided to leave the guns up here till we could get more ammo. Gathering up our weapons and tools, we headed over to Tommy and John’s to disassemble their deck. It looked like hunting a zombie herd was going to be on the agenda tomorrow, and I so looked forward to hot-wiring another thirty cars.

  It didn’t take long to take the deck apart, which surprised me. Even despite the cold and snow and ice. A pry bar and a few screwdrivers and some elbow grease and we had it apart in two hours. I went to the Safeway parking lot and hot-wired a little Mazda truck, driving it down the alley to the back of the house, and we loaded the back with all the wood we had. Moments later we were at the stairs leading to the roof ladder. Carrying everything up the ladder was a bitch and took forever. We moved all we could to the landing and piled it there, then she went to the roof and I went up and down carrying board after board and handing them up to her as she stacked them up. When we were done, I drove the Mazda back up front and was thankful to get out of its gas-smelling cab. Something was very wrong with that little truck, and I feared it was going to burn up at any moment.

  I guess it was about noon by then. I sat there in the tent listening to the wind blow little pellets of ice against the outside. I was exhausted. She called to me for lunch. When I came out I was thinking about how we were going to put the first aboveground garden box together. We needed nails or screws and a drill. A power drill would be better and quieter than a hammer. We needed power, and a crane for the dirt and five thousand men for the pyramid. I wondered if the pharaohs had so much fun in the early days of their kingdoms.

  After lunch I went back into the tent. Since we didn’t have the stuff to put together the boxes yet, we decided to clear another house, this time the one next to Tommy and John’s. I didn’t think there would be much to it since we’d spent most of the morning taking the deck off the back and hadn’t heard anything from inside, but still it had to be done.

  ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 18

  ZWD: Dec. 15.

  Black trucks and zombie parades, oh my. I also get an early Christmas gift.

  They all had to be done. I had just lain back down and closed my eyes for a quick nap when
she said, “You better get out here and look at this.” The black truck with red flames was traveling east slowly down Seventeenth Street. The burly black guy we’d seen before with his red-and-gray-checkered coat was in the back kneeling down messing with a rope. The rope was tied to something somewhere in the bed of the truck. They were moving at a snail’s pace. The passenger window was down and a guy with a knit cap was looking back behind them, half-hanging out the window. The black guy in the back yelled, “Slow down, you’re losing them.” Trailing behind them off the rope was a body. This one I know was alive, and he was kicking and struggling as they dragged him down the road. Just a few yards behind him came the zombie herd we’d seen this morning. The truck was leading them somewhere and using live bait to do it.

  About the time they got to the intersection of Seventeenth and Main, the truck surged forward and sped through the intersection. They were speeding to the three headless bodies we’d left in the road. The guy in the back made his way to the back of the cab; his salt and pepper beard filled with ice and snow, he banged on the hood of the cab and yelled for the driver to slow down. The guy hanging out of the truck turned and looked at the headless bodies next to him, then pointed it out to the black man in the back. Both were now looking at them. The passenger slid out of the window and knelt down beside one of the bodies. I could hear him say, “Cut clean off.” The black man in the back looked around at the blood pools and smears.

  “Looks like one man. We got us a warrior out here somewhere.” He looked at the herd getting closer. “Get in the truck, let’s get these back. We’ll worry about our warrior later.” He was looking around at all the buildings and just before his eyes scanned the roof of our Safeway, we ducked down. I don’t think we were spotted. We heard the man in back beat on the hood of the cab again and yell, “Get going,” and the truck slowly rumbled away.

  We’d backed away to the center of the roof and were sitting down listening for the truck to disappear, neither one of us willing to even whisper for fear that they might hear us over the rumble of that engine. When it was silent again she said, “We need to do something about them.”

  “I know, but what?”

  “Kill them?”

  “We can’t do that. Besides, we don’t know how many of them there are,” I pointed out. “Maybe they’re not bad people, maybe this is just their way of surviving? Different from ours.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew that those assumptions were wrong. These bastards were marauders, killers, and very bad men.

  “We have to do something.”

  “Let’s talk to them.”

  “How? We don’t even know where they are. And you remember when they just drove by and killed that person. They didn’t even check to see if that man was a zombie, they just killed him. If we just go up to them and say, ‘Hi, we’re your neighbors, we come in peace’ they’re going to kill us too. Or something worse.” She had a point. I had an idea.

  The next hour we’d been in and out of the Safeway with the supplies we needed and were back on the roof making our signs. Several signs said “Notice this way” with an arrow pointing in big black magic marker. The first poster was taped to the front door of the U.S. Drug Store building in bright neon pink. I thought they’d notice it first and follow the trail we left them. We stapled the poster-size sheets to telephone poles that led to the parking lot of the Izard Street Baptist Church, and there on the door we tied a notebook with a pen attached to it and wrote on the first page, “Hi, we need to talk. Let’s meet,” and then we left.

  I know it’s a slow means of communicating, but they wouldn’t know where we were and how many of us we were, so it gave us an advantage, although a small one. Now all we had to do was wait.

  That night on the roof, we talked about how we were going to do this meeting. After they responded to the note, we’d choose a time and place to meet, then wait and see from there. Brilliantly detailed plan, right? I know; it was very adaptable. We did decide that we’d meet at the Save-A-Lot grocery store down on Broadway next to Roosevelt Road. There’d be big trees and plenty of hiding places for us to watch them and see how they acted. We decided that we’d meet just before dawn so we could have plenty of time to hide in trees or wherever. Now all we had to do was wait for them to find the notebook.

  Since we could only check the notebook tomorrow we went ahead and cleared the house next to Tommy and John’s house. Like I thought, it took us ten minutes and we found nothing. Not even anything useful for us. I was sent to get the three heads of the hunters and bring them back to Tommy and John’s house while she started a pot with hot water and vinegar. She was going to boil the skulls clean. The house ended up stinking so I sat outside on the front porch while she worked. I pulled out another Swisher Sweet Peach cigar and chewed the plastic tip. I sat out there till the freezing rain started to fall, and then I went inside.

  She was at the table painting flowers around the eyes of the skulls. Across their foreheads were their names. Inside their mouths, she’d used glue to attach their IDs. So it looked like we were going to the Mount Holly Cemetery again in the morning.

  Back on the roof of the Safeway, we were talking in the tent. We were talking about taking trips and going to the Grand Caymans, or Mexico or Greece, just leaving. I wanted to leave, but where you gonna go? We were just talking about getting away from all this madness and going someplace where we could get back to normal life. I’d mentioned how I’d like to go hunting in Colorado again. The dream with Dylan and Stager kind of made me homesick. That was when she remembered, “Oh! We have to go back to the Pages’ house.”

  “Why?”

  “I found something and I think we need it.”

  “What?”

  “The combination to the gun safe,” she offered with a smile.

  I thought about the black truck, about the advantage those guns would have for us with them. About going hunting for the winter and how easily we could live off squirrels or small birds. We suddenly had an advantage if she did indeed have the combination to that gun safe at the Page house. All I could do was smile about it; hell, you couldn’t wipe that grin off my face. I slept well that night.

  ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 19

  ZWD: Dec. 16.

  When the electricity went out, keeping a fire became key. Dryer lint is perfect for starting a fire, and there’s lots of it in the city.

  The next morning we woke up early and I was excited. We were going to get guns. I went out of the tent and rummaged around in the food bins to see what we could eat. There was a can of mixed fruit and a small bag of fortune cookies. Today was going to be simple. We were going to stop at the base house and pick up the drill and some deck screws and head over to the Page house to get the guns. Once we got back, we were going to build the raised garden boxes and start hot-wiring cars. I thought we could get at least one side of the ramps closed before dark. I stretched and was lacing up my boots when she said, “Where are all the lights?”

  I looked around at the surrounding buildings and absently said, “It’s daylight, they’ve gone out.” And gave it not another thought.

  “No, not just the streetlights. All of them are out.”

  I looked up and started noticing what she was talking about. The lights on the old TCBY building were off; all the streetlights were off. All the lights were off. Turning to the tent, she pointed and said, “Look.” I looked over my shoulder and the rope lights that we’d strung to the tent door were off. The city had lost power.

  A real tremor of fear shot through my body as I looked at the ladder that was no longer electrified. We were now vulnerable. A lot of things that were easy to us were now going to be much more difficult without electricity. Hot water, heat indoors. I think I started to hyperventilate just thinking about it all when I saw the gargoyle’s eyes pop back on. All the lights popped back on. The TCBY building’s sign lit back up, streetlights came back on, and there was a buzz in the air again that I hadn’t noticed before. The city w
as alive again. A thought sank into the pit of my stomach—but for how long? I imagined someone in the electrical plant for the city asking, “What does this switch do?” and turning off everything, then going, “Oh no!” and flipping it back on. I didn’t even know where the power plant was for the city, but I told myself that someone was learning how to use it, probably to blackmail us all into paying them for the service. I added “invent alternative power source” to the list of things I needed to do. Nothing spectacular, I’d just whip up a cold fusion reactor. Get me some rubber bands and a can of coke and I’m on it. I’ll just MacGyver that together real quick. Crap, I hate my life.

  She gave a satisfied “humph” and asked what we were doing today as if this was normal and not something else to worry about. What were we doing? Hot-wiring cars, clearing houses, taking apart another deck, hiding from the black truck, looking for more food, getting the guns from the safe, take your pick.

  “Let’s get the guns first. If the power goes out again I don’t want to be caught up here without firepower.”

  “How are we going to protect this place if the power goes out?”

  “I don’t know. You got any ideas?”

  “Nothing yet, but I’ll work on it.”

  I told her she needed to work fast as I walked over to the ledge facing the alley and looked down. The problem was that there were two entrances to the alley. If we blocked off one of them, we could create a killing zone for anyone below trying to get to the ladder. If we closed off the entrance to Seventeenth Street, then we drew attention to ourselves but we had a perfectly long killing zone. If we closed off the entrance on Eighteenth Street, we couldn’t easily slip in and out of the alley unseen. I’d have to think about this one for a while.