by Nick Cole
The surrounding quiet was unreal. Thick. Like a blanket, or even a living animal that smothered its victims with its heavy weight. Or like something waiting out beyond the perimeter, something waiting where it couldn’t be seen.
“When we gonna make a run up to the store for more food and y’know... stuff. I need some smokes, bad.” Ritter was shirtless, his body muscled yet pasty, slick with sweat and grimy with dirt.
“Let’s get this finished up,” grunted Frank as he pushed the plywood board up into place, covering a window, with Dante matching his movements on the other side of the board. “And then we’ll make a run. There’s a store nearby called the Market Faire.”
Holiday maneuvered in through the tight doorway with three heavy two by eights on his shoulder. He set them down on someone’s faux leather couch underneath a picture of a family posed in matching khaki pants and white button down shirts, as waves and a Southern California sunset completed the portrait.
“Find the studs and anchor to that,” said Frank, breathing heavily.
“Yes sir, boss man,” said Ritter and dragged a hammer off a belt loop while reaching into his pants for more of the long iron nails. Dante was already placing one into the two by eights.
Holiday waited for Frank to tell him what to do next. But Frank hadn’t. Wouldn’t. For every job that needed someone to do something, Frank had just picked someone else. At times he would even look at Holiday, but he wouldn’t see him, or at least that’s how it felt to everyone.
Holiday wondered if they were all in on it. If everyone else was counting him out too.
They were sealing up the front wall, or what Frank had called “the Southern Wall of the Castle”. The defenses he’d put up with Ash and Frank seemed almost flimsy to Holiday compared with Frank’s new plans. But the work was slower. Right now they were just trying to seal the ground level outward-facing windows in the townhome units. Eventually they’d have to seal the gaps between the building with more than just wire and fencing. Flimsy wire mesh wouldn’t hold up against a crowd of zombies like the ones that had surrounded the Green Front Headquarters, or so Ritter declared and Candace and Dante silently agreed.
The Fence would stay. It would be a guide for their future wall, said Frank. But how to get the materials for a wall that was worth putting up was the question that pulled at the back of Frank’s mind that whole hot sweaty morning of a seemingly endless summer, even though the calendar read mid-September.
The Southern Wall was the wall that contained the main entrance and faced the rest of Viejo Verde and the neighborhood across the way where Holiday had hopped the fence to rescue Ash. If there were more zombies coming, they’d come from that direction. So that, as Frank pointed out, was where they needed to start the work of building defenses.
At noon they broke for lunch which consisted of sandwiches at Frank’s house, and an hour later they piled onto the flatbed truck and drove slowly up to the Market Faire.
“There’s at least two of ‘em in the walk-in freezer back in the meat department,” announced Holiday. No one said anything and that made Holiday certain that Frank had told them he was not to be trusted.
“Let’s clear the store as a group. If it’s safe, we’ll split into teams and shop for half an hour. Produce and meat are bad by now so don’t even think about it. We’ll have to get some crops started eventually,” announced Frank.
“Crops,” said Ritter under his breath. “Sure thing, boss man.”
“What about frozen?” asked Candace.
“Good point. For some strange reason the electricity is still working,” answered Frank. “So why not until it goes out.”
Holiday cast a glance at the shopping cart full of booze he’d left out in the farthest reaches of the parking lot when he’d drunkenly fled from a mass of walking dead people in his middle of the night misadventure. When he turned back to the rest of the group, Frank was watching him.
They went inside and cleared the store. There were no other zombies besides the two locked away in the butcher’s freezer and a half hour later, with stuffed bags and shopping carts, they left the store. Frank gave them the rest of the afternoon off to get their houses sorted. They’d start back to work on the Southern Wall again in the morning.
That night there wasn’t any fog and Holiday stayed home. He could hear them down by Frank’s townhome, barbecuing some frozen chicken Frank had picked up from the store. Later, he walked down the street a little way and stood watching them from the shadows of the kiddie park.
Just get drunk, Holiday told himself, feeling the thought, testing it out to see if it could hold inside his head. “Forget it and let the dice fly,” he whispered.
The words felt odd in his mind. Familiar, and yet, out of place.
Let the dice fly.
He walked forward out of the dark and found the other survivors sitting on folding chairs around the glowing coals of the barbecue. Ritter was finishing the story of how they’d all survived inside the Green Front Technology Headquarters for more than a week. He left out none of the suicides or poorly planned escape attempts that ended in the deaths of others.
He did leave out a certain briefcase which was now stored under the queen-sized bed of the townhome he’d decided to occupy up near the main entrance and the front gate. Frank called it “the Gatehouse” because the townhome sat next to the entrance.
Frank got up and pulled some chicken skewers off the grill, set them on a plate and handed them to Holiday without a word. Holiday looked at Ash who smiled only politely, then turned away to her glass of wine and someone else. Then he sat down.
“So what’s your story?” asked Dante.
Holiday looked up from his skewer. He’d been hungrier than he thought. He hadn’t drank. The bottle was still waiting on the front steps of his townhome. He hadn’t eaten much either. Now Frank’s chicken skewers, yellow with spices and smelling of charred onion made his mouth water.
“I mean,” continued Dante. “How’d you come to be out that way and run into Ritter?” It wasn’t hard to notice the way the big black man spat out Ritter’s name.
“Just was,” said Holiday after a long silence. Then he shoved a thick piece of tasty chicken into his mouth and began to chew. No one probed any further and dinner, or them watching Holiday finish the last of the chicken, resumed. Someone got up to refill everyone’s glass and Holiday noticed they didn’t offer any to him.
So Frank’s talked to them, thought Holiday as he chewed the last of the tasty chicken. Telling them he’s a drunk. A risk and incapable of being relied upon. Incapable of being trusted.
“How we gonna fill in them gaps between the buildings, Frank?” asked Dante.
Frank sighed. “I don’t know just yet. But something’ll occur to me.”
“Better be soon,” mumbled Dante. “Cause ain’t no use all this other stuff if them things can just walk on in here.”
Dinner finished shortly after that and everyone drifted off into the night, heading back toward their new townhomes.
Holiday heard Ritter ask, “Walk you home, Candy?” in the darkness that surrounded the still-glowing barbecue.
“Candace and no, thank you,” she replied. The monotone “thank you” emphasized the obvious flatness of her rejection.
“Whatever, girlfriend,” said Ritter and they were all gone, even Ash who’d left to check on Skully.
Frank was organizing the last of the trash.
“Thanks for the chicken, Frank.”
He turned to face Holiday, smiling. “Sure thing, buddy. No problem.”
There was an awkward moment. As though something more should come next. “I thought...,” began Holiday, stumbling. “I thought I was persona non grata.”
“Not at all, buddy. I’ll still feed ya. You can live here. It’s your house. You can even try to help out like you have been.” Frank paused and stuffed some paper plates into a trash bag. Then then he turned and looked straight at Holiday. “But I’ll never trust you. And
, in case you’re wondering, I’ve told everyone else not to trust you. Just so you know. It’s safer that way. For us.”
“Just so I know,” repeated Holiday after a short silence.
“Yeah. Just so you know, buddy. And soon, it’s just a matter of time really, trust me, you’ll blow it again and then they’ll see I was right about you. Matter of time, kid.”
Holiday remained silent, then, “That’s important to you, isn’t it Frank? Being right about me?”
Frank’s face blossomed with surprise. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? I mean I... we, we all want to go on living. And right now, being right’s all we’ve got and maybe that might not even be enough. But you don’t understand that. You don’t get it. You know why? Because you don’t care about anyone but yourself. And life, or whatever it is that’s happened out there, it’s gonna make you pay if you’re wrong. So, yeah, being right is real important to the rest of us right about now. Ought to be. You’d know that if you weren’t so busy killing yourself with the booze.”
“So... what if I don’t drink?”
“So what if you don’t? So what if you do? I don’t care anymore, kid, and neither does anyone else. You had your chance and you chose the booze over your friends. Over me and Ash. We woke up to a street full of those things because you left the gate wide open on your little booze run. We could have been killed and you couldn’t have cared less.”
“But you weren’t!” Holiday shot back. “And oh, by the way, I rescued some people while I was out.”
Frank shook his head in disgust. “If that’s the way you need to see it, fine. But all that... all that “us not getting killed” and you “helping” those people... hell kid, that’s not even the point. You walked out on us ‘cause you got thirsty. You chose it over us and mark my words, you’ll do it again.”
A glare, filled with hate and contempt and a small amount of pity, stared back at Holiday. It was the pity that stung the most, thought Holiday who shrugged, then looked off into the night. Frank smiled, cleared his throat and smiled again. “Listen, kid,” his voice was warm and low. “I don’t hate you. Yeah, I was disappointed in what you did, but I realize you’ve got a problem with the hooch. Fine. But I can’t help you right now and I can’t trust you ever. I wanna go on living. I need to go on living. I...” Frank paused.
Holiday saw a sudden tear form in one of Frank’s eyes. The older man bent down quickly to pick up a stray wine glass, then rose again to face Holiday. If there had been a tear, it was gone now.
“We all need to go on living, kid. And... I just don’t think you’re good for this community.”
Holiday walked back toward his townhome. The streets were dark where the street lights didn’t cast their light. In his mind, he could see the bottle and knew it was still there, waiting for him. Right where Frank had left it on the front porch. Ahead, he could see the small gate leading into the small yard and the steps to his house. He knew the bottle of top shelf liquor, probably whiskey from Frank’s cabinet, was waiting there, still, just out of sight, waiting in the shadows.
Waiting for him.
Let the dice fly.
He kept on walking past his house. Toward the front entrance. The light in Ritter’s “Gatehouse” was still on. Holiday snorted. “Gatehouse.” Frank wants to be king of a castle. Fine.
He dialed in the combination for the padlock at the gate, heard it “click” gently in the dark, slipped through the gate, reached back in, and snapped the lock closed again. Checking it twice. Making sure it was locked.
Then he spun the combination dial.
Let the dice fly.
And he was off, out onto the street and into the night. Off in the dark.
Chapter Four
He wasn’t going to drink.
Outside the gate, standing under palms that lined the entrance, Holiday watched as ground-lighting timed to some un-regarding automated system that didn’t care if the world had ended or gone on, threw shafts of golden light up into the high fronds above. Holiday turned and looked down the hill, following the road. He was facing west. The truth was, he had no intention of drinking. Holiday knew he needed to earn their trust back. Frank’s. Ash’s. Everyone’s.
Ash.
All that hot day, as they’d labored under Frank’s direction to hammer sheets of plywood into place across the windows of the individual townhomes that formed the outer wall of the “Castle”, he’d thought about her. Nailing crossbeams into place along the studs to back the wood from the battening it might take some day when the dead and crazy came calling, he’d thought about how to get back into the group. How to get back to what they’d almost had in the pool that night. He and Ash.
Hopefully that would never happen. The dead showing up, that is. Hopefully the corpses had all followed the natural contours of the land and wandered toward the coast. A battering forest of fists at their plywood-sealed windows and locked doors, and even the someday actual front gate Frank promised them, should never happen. Because if it did, where could they run to next if the walls collapsed?
Holiday tried to think of some way to seal the gaps between the townhome clusters that made up the outer wall. They’d all tried to think of something that could be done to secure the gaping holes in their perimeter. If all the zombies back at the Green Front parking lot concentrated at any one point along the flimsy wire mesh fence, then it was over for all of them. There’d be nothing they could do but run.
A run to nowhere as fast as they could for as long as they could. Which wasn’t forever. Holiday remembered what it was like to be chased by the dead through the night with no place to hide. You could only run for so long. And you never knew what was ahead of you, except probably more of them. And the dead never seemed to tire of chasing.
“Build a cinderblock wall,” Candace had offered.
They’d discussed that. But they’d need the wall to reach at least two stories high. The amount of cinderblocks they’d need, brick or whatever they could get their hands on, was beyond what the Home Depot had in stock. The next building supply store was two cities away across dozens of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods most likely... infested with the dead.
Was that the right word? Infested?
Neighborhoods where each house could hide dozens of once-humans turned to frenzied, almost unstoppable, killers. Zombies. That’s what everyone was calling them.
Infected.
Each supply run farther and farther from what was known might draw more, many more, zombies back to the Vineyards townhome complex. Back to where it was safe, for now. Back to the one place that seemed safe in the world and what was left of it.
A herd of dead.
Infected.
Like animals.
Even less than.
Dante was the next to try. He’d suggested they dig a moat.
That plan was pretty good, initially. Until they considered the closeness of the slope that led down from the road above the Vineyards, leading up to the intersection and its proximity to the “Eastern Wall” they would start building next. A good rain, which might happen if this was an El Nińo year, no one could remember if it was, and a hill that had been destabilized by a slit trench would slide down and crash through their wall.
An El Nińo year was a year of almost torrential monsoon-like rains and flooding. Before the world had ended two weeks ago, those El Nińo years had almost seemed like the end of the world as city services and news crews raced to handle sliding hills, overflowing rivers and swamped roadways.
Frank thought it felt like it might actually be an El Nińo year.
“Plus,” added Ritter. “They’ll just pile up in the ditch and start climbing on top of each other.” He paused. Then, “they almost made it up to the second story that way back at Green Front.”
But they hadn’t, Candace thought and didn’t say a word.
“So even if we do build a wall, what’s to keep ‘em from doing that?” asked Dante.
“Us,” replied Frank. “Once the w
alls are up, we’ll build walkways so we can move along the walls quickly. If we see them piling up in any one location, we’ll use long poles or something to push ‘em off.”
Holiday spoke up. “We could lure them farther down the wall and spread them out by making noise and getting their attention. They seem to go for that. We should get trumpets and horns.”
“Yeah, that’s good,” said Frank, lost in the problem, forgetting the rule to ignore Holiday in front of everyone at all times. When Frank noticed the policy lapse he quickly changed the subject. “Weapons. We’ll need to think about weapons because we can’t just push zombies off the wall. We’ll have to destroy them. Right in the head. Right now we’ve only got one rifle with three bullets and three other guns without any ammo. Tonight, look through your places for anything. Guns are obvious, but my guess is we’ll need to make weapons that we can... y’know... jab... into their heads. Or smash ‘em with. Something along those lines.”
Frank hadn’t mentioned the two pearl-handled silver .45s and the matching silencers he’d used to clear out the Vineyards last time. He was down to a fully-loaded clip apiece for each pistol. He’d kept an odd bullet back. It was in his shirt pocket.
The “just-in-case” bullet.
It was much later that Holiday, who’d been thinking about how to solve the wall problem, remembered the pistol Ritter had pointed at him back at the 7-11. The snub-nosed .357 magnum.
Ritter hadn’t offered that to the community defense arsenal either.
Later, when they’d finished the left half of the Western Wall and were taking a short break, resting in the shade underneath the high stucco wall and terracotta-tiled roofs, Ritter spoke up next about what to do regarding the gaps in the walls.
“Over in Afghanistan they use these large mesh and canvas bags. They fill ‘em up with rock. If we could get something like that, a container or something, maybe we could build a wall out of those? We could steal ourselves a dozer and load the bags, then stack ‘em up.”