by J. Rudolph
“You see our surprise?” Trent asked.
“I did. How did you pull that off?”
“We were sitting at the gas station filling up these gas cans we found. Across from the gas station was a CostSaver. We had absolutely no intention of going inside that CostSaver, CostSaver's were designed like crap, They were large boxed warehouse stores, filled with high shelves, no windows, and really only one entrance/exit point. We knew we would get trapped in there, no matter how great it sounded. The parking lot looked like a zombie free for all, like everyone and their dog had decided that was where the best place was for riding out the zombie apocalypse. From our gas station vantage point we could see them walking into the automatic doors, both trying to get in and trying to get out, and that cemented the decision to just not even entertain the thought of what could be in there. Imagine a fly bouncing off a window and you're close. I bet lots of people thought that with the tons of supplies they could live well there. Probably why the sporting good store was deserted. I'm on a tangent. Anyway, when we were done we started to drive away, passing the building. Behind the building was the delivery truck. There was this one confused zombie wandering around it, wearing the SpringForth uniform so we took him out. Wanna know the best part? It's full. The guy must have been on his first stop when he converted. No, wait, the best part is as you can see its a real delivery truck. Its not the kind that stops off at the gas stations. Those ones are stupid and little, wasting a ton of space on the refrigeration units, not this trailer, cold clearly was not a priority in this kind of truck. There is no sleeper cab for if we ever have to go a distance away, but oh well. Know what else we can do? When we're done with a bottle we can refill it, because they have lids. We can totally keep the water supply up.” Trent grinned like a kid who got straight A's on his report card and got the bike he wanted as a reward. I was impressed. That trailer was about 40 feet. It would serve us very well. He rolled open the trailer door to show me the full trailer, and to show off the assortment of bottle sizes in there.
After a minute, the distant groans came from the road as the zombies came closer to the gates. “Ah, here they are. Slow buggers.” Trent and I started to fire on the zombies. There were many of them, DaWayne definitely did not exaggerate that when he said there were a crapload coming up behind them. The group that I had been watching moments before was just one pack.
The zombies continued to pour in from the left. We continued to fire on them. From the corner of my eye I noticed movement coming from the right. When I turned to see what had caught my eye I realized that it was a pair of zombies. I fired on them which startled Trent, no one had expected them to be coming from a different spot. While the others were continuing to take care of the ones that had followed the truck, Trent and I moved to see if there were more coming from the other side. At least ten more were on their way.
“What the hell?” Trent said. “They never have come from a different direction before. We were no where near there.” He pointed down the road where zombies were coming out of a dead end street. We kept firing. It took a moment but the zombies finally stopped coming. We had finally gotten the upper hand on this.
All of a sudden, we heard screams coming from the back of the complex, where the garden area was. Trent and I looked at each other with a startled look. No good could come from a scream like that. Joey caught our attention and in a series of hand gestures indicated we needed to get back there to check out the cause of the sounds. We ran to the back to see what the reason was for the scream.
It was Steven. He was on his back writhing in pain as a zombie bit into him tearing muscle from his stomach and pushed the meat into its mouth hungrily. It kept repeating the process over and over again. It heard us approach and got up in an aggressive stance ready to attack. Steven's blood shone on its hands and around its mouth. Meat dangled from its mouth as it started coming towards us. Even with a fresh kill at its feet it still came at us. Joey lifted his gun, aimed, and with a single shot fired on the zombie stopping it dead in its tracks. Joey walked up to where Steven laid bleeding. He wasn't moving much anymore. Joey squatted down next to him, apologized, and fired a single shot into Steven's ear.
I stumbled away from the area, stopping to vomit. This was another person I knew that had been killed because of the zombies. I couldn't help but to start sobbing. Today had been an emotional rollercoaster.
Joey went to investigate how the zombie had gotten in, we knew that nothing had gotten past us in the front. There was a gap that we were not aware of behind the shed that the zombie had gotten through. We were stunned that such a major lapse had happened. There were wood bits that were on the ground that Joey used to fill the gap for the time being. He did a quick look to make sure there were no other zombies wandering around there before he put the last chunk in place and was satisfied there were none. “I'm going to tell DaWayne to keep an extra eye on this tonight while on watch. We can come up with something more permanent in the morning.”
“Let's go home, hon.” Trent whispered. I nodded through my tears, gulping in air through sobs. “Ty? I'm gonna take her home. Do you have the stuff handled?”
“Yeah man. We're gonna lock up the trailers and we'll empty the bed of the truck into one of the empties. It's almost dark now anyway. We'll catch you in the morning.”
Trent and I went up the stairs and into the apartment where Drew was listening to his mp3 player. I went in to take a shower to wash a days worth of sweat off and wishing I was able to scrub out the vision of Steven being pulled apart like he was a deer being eaten by a lion in a nature film.
The Haul
The next morning we needed to process the stuff that the guys had brought in. We had set alarms to go off bright and early but as it turned out no one in the complex had to rely on the alarms to wake them as we all woke up to the smell of breakfast. The water truck alone was an amazing find and had taken a huge weight of the shoulders of many of us, but it was the bed of the truck that Tyreese had unloaded that made Mercedes absolutely swoon and put her in the cooking mood. The truck bed had been filled to the brim with non-perishables. There were enough canned fruits and vegetables to feed a small army. They also had managed to score a ton of those just add water boxed meals, several bags of flour, sugar, rice (both instant and slow cook), instant potatoes, powdered milk, powdered eggs, boxes of tuna helper, rice-a-roni, canned meats like tuna, chicken, corned beef, and salmon as well as the obligatory spam, boxes of macaroni and cheese, and probably every type of powdered drink mix ever made.
They said that though the freezers had been turned off from lack of power there was still a great deal of ice build up and decided to go for the meats, eggs, milk, and butter, filling the cab completely with back seat folded up. We knew that those would be short lived items and that they would have to be the first consumed but it would make the non-perishable stuff last longer. That morning we stuffed ourselves with bacon and eggs. I was surprised that I had any sort of appetite after last night, it was by far the most grisly scene I had ever seen in person. I tried to put it out of my head.
When we finished eating Trent told me he'd be right back. He disappeared into build then came out with a pile of wood under one arm and a hammer in the other hand. He headed out to the back and fixed the hole in the fence. I know he was berating himself the entire time for not having noticed it before. That was just the person that Trent was. He took the responsibility of the world on his shoulders too often. It was probably the only real thing I wished I could change about my husband, to get him to see that not everything is his responsibility. When it came to the hole in the fence we were all equally responsible. None of us looked behind the shed. No one saw it or if they had no one had said anything so it could be fixed. Hell, it could have been that way all along for all we knew or it could have been fine until just before the zombie came through. We knew that zombies didn't feel pain so I wondered if that zombie had just been pushing against the fence until that one last push happened that fina
lly broke it. We will never be able to find out the story behind it. It was too late. Even if we did find out more about the hole Steven would still be dead and no fact finding mission would ever change that.
After Trent came back we started in on the U-Haul. Trent had always been good at maximizing space when packing a trailer or storage unit and he had put those skills to work here. They had struck gold at the home store. They acquired two gas powered generators and one propane powered one. We rationalized the fuel consuming generators use for critical applications. Food had to be kept cold and would be the only unit that would require constant power so it got one of the generators. The other two were relegated to build and medical, though they would be left off unless there was a real need for them. Not running the other two on a regular basis would keep us with a back up generator should anything happen to the food generator. The generator that ran on propane would be used first and there were several tanks stuffed into the cab of the U-Haul and several more in the cab of the SpringForth truck.
There were four large, flat boxes and four large squat boxes. These were the solar set ups. They had found them in the warehouse waiting to be delivered and installed in a couple locations. The systems were 10,000 watt systems. Each flat box held 40 panels, and each of the squat boxes had two combiner boxes and two power inverters. They also got charge controllers just to make sure that the system wouldn't be accidentally overcharged, permanently destroying the system. They made sure to get the mounting brackets as well. It was cool that the system was designed to be stationary which made things a lot easier. One system would be installed on each building, each unit getting half the power. In this world, the electricity needed was less than it had been as people didn't use their own refrigerators so it should be sufficient for each unit to be allotted 5,000 watts. It probably wouldn't run the air conditioners but it would definitely keep the lights on. With Steven being gone and no reason to power his apartment, we decided that it would be a good idea to route the power to food to be used first. That way the unit wouldn't use up all the fuel in the generator when it could be saved.
While happy with the solar set ups, Tanya was more than excited to find that they located three pallets of fertilizer with plant food mixed in, three small orange trees, a grapefruit tree, and an apple sapling. They had taken every vegetable seed envelope they could find and had even accidentally gotten some flower seeds by grabbing the display and shaking it empty into the trailer. There were a variety of gardening tools and gloves and an assortment of kid sized gardening stuff so the kids could join in the maintenance of the garden. There were watering cans and pesticides. Tanya wasted no time in sorting through the envelopes of seeds and more than once did her eyes get misty in joy.
“Y'all don't have any idea how darned happy I am seeing all this here. Y'all can't. This is just so much more than I ever dared to hope for. Steven would have loved it, God rest his soul. If it's acceptable by everyone, I'd like to dedicate the garden in memory of him and Eric. What do y'all think?” Tanya was so intent on the idea that we had to agree. It would be a lovely way to remember them.
“Just so everyone knows, Steven was out there last night cause he heard something. He figured that there was some animal out there and he didn't want the seeds that he and my momma had planted from her personal stash of seeds to be messed up. Figured it was a coyote or something that needed to be scared off. He died cause he went out to protect this.” Trisha explained, crying a bit herself. “I never figured he'd go like that. We're going to bury him later today. DaWayne is digging the hole.”
Tanya looked up at Trisha, her eyes filling further with tears, though these now were of loss, not joy. “Oh, baby. I didn't know that. It wasn't worth his life, those seeds. Oh I wish I had known that was the idea he had in his head. I'd have talked him right out of it. That poor boy. I really liked him. Sure he was a strange boy, but that’s probably why I liked him like I did.”
Tanya thumbed through the envelopes of seeds again, deciding that it was a blessing that the flower packets had been mixed in. “I think planting these in the cemetery area would make the whole thing nicer. Cemeteries should have flowers.”
Power Up
There wasn't a lot to say in Steven's funeral. He never let anyone get close enough to know him well enough to have any meaningful words. We did the same thing we did for Eric of wrapping him in his bedding. We also found his drumsticks and a practice drum pad to put with him. We all said our goodbyes and went off to start our projects. I felt a twinge of guilt that we were going ahead with our plans of setting up stuff after a funeral. It almost felt like we were saying sucks to be you. It wasn't, and I knew Steven wouldn't have expected us to stop our lives right then and there. It was a weird contrast though to bury him and put up power supplies when the way we closed out Eric's funeral was a fight to the death with zombies. Zombie slaying felt like an appropriate post funeral activity. I sighed and shook off the thoughts. It was time to work.
Setting up the solar panels was a high priority item. We had located a ladder but the process of getting 40 solar panels on the roof seemed a daunting task. Each panel was 45 inches by 40 inches so moving them, knowing that if they are dropped then we would be out. We came up with a harness made out of sheets and strapped them on to our backs, taking them up one by one. The process was very slow going, taking four hours to get all 40 on one roof. Trent started to put all the mounting brackets on the roof and for the second time, I was grateful they grabbed the stationary panels. Once everything was mounted the wires were hooked together and run through the charge controller then to the combiner. From the combiner the power cords went through the wall to where inverter was set up so we could use the 110v devices. The set up was designed to provide most of the power a house would need and the directions said that both combiners and inverters were supposed to be used for one residence, but we rejustified the half power as more than enough. Good thing too seeing how frustrating it was to get the panels up there in the first place. If we had to double our efforts we'd probably given up on it all, not to mention how much the required roof space of 710 square feet actually took up. It took a total of six hours to hook up the entire thing, not counting a lunch break, and we had a late start so we vowed to pick up where we left off the next day. On a plus side there should be enough of a charge by sundown to see if there was any success in our hook up.
After dark, we probably had never seen such a beautiful light as we did that night. I had a new respect for all things electrical. Trent, Daniel, and I invited everyone over to our apartments so everyone could take part in the joy of that days work. The power didn't last for long since it didn't get the proper charge, but it was awesome while it lasted.
Continuing On
Following day brought more work. The solar panels went up more smoothly having already had the experience once already. While we worked on the solar set up Tanya rallied some of the apprentices of other units and the kids to help her get some of the seeds in the ground. Tanya had spent the night before looking in various reference guides and raking through her memory of what plants do the best in southern California in the middle of summer. She remembered that the gourds like pumpkin and squash grew well and found in her searches that carrots did well. She planted potatoes as well as broccoli hoping that they would grow well this time as it had in the past for her. She planted onion and garlic in a ring around the garden to help detour hungry rabbits.
In the cemetery, Tanya took gentle care in weeding the ground, aerating the dirt, and planting the seeds. She made sure the wooden crosses with the names carved into them were clean. She created a path with rocks that had been turned up from the garden and planted an orange tree on either side of the entrance. She plotted out the area to make sure that there was room for others just in case, though no one wanted to think of that for any length of time. To finish it off she placed some sticks left over from the stake project every two feet. Some rope that was found too frayed to do anything that required any
load was used to wind around the sticks roping off the area like a fence. She made a sign that read “The Eric and Steven Memorial Gardens” and placed it where the sidewalk ended and the food garden began. Tanya poured her heart into the cemetery. Tyreese had wandered by to check on his wife to find me looking at the gardens in awe. I acknowledged him with a slight nod, not sure by the look on his face that he really wanted to talk. He seemed to be lost in his thoughts as he watched her fish a stray rock out of the soon to be flower bed. He had drawn a deep breath and started to speak.
“I think that the thing that hurts her the most about the zombie apocalypse is knowing that she would not be likely to visit her mother's grave again. The only thing that she seems to have comfort in,” he told me, “is that she knows that her mom had died months before the outbreak and that she wasn't around to see the dead walking around killing others. I think doing this cemetery is her way of continuing to work through the loss she feels to not being able to visit her mom anymore.
“As for me?” Tyreese continued, “I have no clue what came of my folks. I know they couldn't fight off the zombies. They were doing well enough, old and breaking down as what happens the older you get, but still able to take care of themselves. They moved a lot slower the last time I saw them. They never would have been able to run if they had to. Dad's eyesight was failing so if they even had a gun he wouldn't have been able to see well enough to aim it at them. I don't know if they became a zombie or not. Sometimes I envy Tanya. She knows her mama isn't one of those things. Oh. That probably came off poorly. I apologize.” I waved the apology off. There was no need for it. “I have a horrible confession though when it comes to them. Do you mind if I unload it?” I nodded at him. “I hope that when they saw it coming down to the wire that they took an extra large dose of their blood pressure pills. I really do. I don't know what kind of person that makes me, to be praying that they committed suicide. I'm scared to death about how God is going to judge me for even thinking that I hope my parents took their own life. Really what kind of person does that make me?”