“You said everyone works, you make an exception for this kid?” Ellsberg asks, wondering now what they would have done if one of the handless girls survived. Wanikiya laughs a little as he pulls out from the farmhouse driveway.
“He works. He calculates the number of supplies we must have to sustain our community at its current population and what’s necessary to retrieve for the camp when I go on runs. If he says five cans of peaches then you better fucking find five cans. It drives him crazy when I tell him I need a new member and I bring back more people than I said. We make it work, but his numbers are never wrong. Tomorrow, Wanikiya, we’d better figure out where to expand the fence to include more grazing land. It may be springtime, but we have to prepare for next winter.”
“A lot of these older farms have the equipment to can homegrown vegetables. We should set aside a room in the community building to be a cannery. It would be a good job for some of the non-skilled weaker people you bring in.” Wanikiya doesn’t specify, but certainly teenagers like Emily who are unable to lift a hay bales will pickle cucumbers.
The truck jerks to a stop along a now single fence row. Wanikiya slams the gear shift into park. He opens the door. A solo biter mills around the wire. “I’ll get it. You rest.” Wanikiya draws a pistol.
“Not many make it along this fence line.” Boom. The .45 shatters the undead.
“We’ve a special outside patrol scouring this fence line, freeing up the guards to patrol the other fences.”
Wanikiya slides back inside. “That’s the first one on this fence line in a week.”
“Those boys do a good job.”
The truck speeds between trees and the fence until reaching a rocky outcropping. Cargo crates butt against the edge of the rock wall, stacking like giant bricks of a castle.
“What’s your brilliant plan here?” Ellsberg asks.
“We filled those containers with rock and eventually would like to stack enough that no biters or people get through without climbing over.”
“Works better than chain link. It would take more than bolt cutters to get through.”
“Save on guards and patrols, which would free up more people to expand the compound.”
“Why not just bring in more people? You know there are thousands at Fort Wood.”
“We won’t stretch our supplies,” he gives the simple answer. The truck follows the rock wall.
“Building a cargo container castle wall is not why I requested your help. We found giant dump trucks and some excavating equipment. Someone was digging in the limestone.”
“Making a cave,” Wanikiya adds.
“You want to continue?” Ellsberg asks.
“If we find enough qualified men to dig, we use the excavated rock to build up the outer walls and use the cave as a fallback shelter in case we’re ever overrun. Maybe even a tornado bunker.”
“You’d be trapped,” Ellsberg says.
“At that point it’s all about over but the crying. It would be our Helm’s Deep.”
Ellsberg nods in agreement. “A backup plan would give your people a secure feeling.”
“Everyone already carries a gun. Makes me feel secure.”
“I’m sure a lot more people have died in countries where there are no gun owners.”
“Switzerland should be faring well,” Wanikiya chimes in.
“Do you know absolutely?”
“No, but all adult men are required to own a rifle in Switzerland after mandatory conscription in the military.”
“You took my gun,” Major Ellsberg points out.
“Once my man-at-arms, Simon, certifies you, he’ll issue you a gun. Camp law, everyone once trained is armed.”
“Dartagnan wasn’t.”
“I said once cleared. He can’t pass the test. He locks the gate in an emergency.”
“Even little Olivia?” Ellsberg asks.
“Everyone. You’re expected to defend this camp against all biters and others. You saw what was going on at the military base. I’ll have none of that here. We meet every Sunday for a camp-wide meal. We discuss any problems and discuss new rules, and if they are effective, they become the law of the camp. The gun issue is law one. Once properly trained all citizens will carry.”
“Other rules I need to know?”
“Everyone works. If you’re not beneficial to the community, you don’t eat.”
“What would you have done with those poor handless girls?”
“I didn’t have to cross that bridge. I haven’t seen any handicapped people since the first month. Most people confined to a wheelchair or missing a leg didn’t survive the initial outbreak. Dartagnan’s the only special needs person I’ve encountered.”
“There were a few in the refugee camp. The colonel had them evacuated,” Ellsberg remarks.
Emily’s savior knows the Fort will collapse soon. If the colonel had a place to evacuate people, he’d send his daughter there instead of preparing her to go with him. It doesn’t take his elevated IQ to figure out where the infirmed were sent off base.
“How many people reside here?”
“About a hundred and fifty. There are bunk houses in the cantina where we have Sunday meal, and Dartagnan will assign you a home when a house becomes available.”
“There are no single family dwellings anymore. If it has a bedroom, someone lives there,” Wanikiya points out.
“We keep the big fields for cattle and crops. But we expand the west fence and the next expansion will take over several buildings. Moving the congregated people into homes was priority; next expansion will be more grazing land. I’ll explain more when we reach there. The dam is the one area where I guess you could say you need security clearance.” He points down the road they drive past. “We lose the power and we lose everything.”
Ellsberg realizes how this Utopia functions. “So most everyone you’ve brought in here’s skilled labor.”
“Many of the fence guards are just people who survived and are great shots, but most people are here because they have a purpose. We’re going to develop an apprenticeship for some so we don’t lose our electricians, welders, and medical personnel, but rules for education have yet to be established.”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“I don’t see a rash of technical school graduates next semester. No matter what we do from now on life won’t return to the way it was before. Too many have died.”
“The military’s working on restoring order,” Ellsberg assures them.
“If anything, we’ll return to a colonial lifestyle, only the Indians are relentless walking corpses. We’ll salvage what we can, maybe even keep the electricity on, but trips to the moon are out. Advanced medicine, premature birth survival increases, and airplanes—all gone. Hell, bullets will soon become the best form of currency.”
“Don’t you have re-loaders?”
“For now. We’ve the ability to make some rounds, but eventually we’ll need a lead mine. We should be rationing bullets, but I tell you, when attacked by the biters, I don’t quibble. Shoot and shoot some more. I hope as we run low on shells we run low on undead. Unfortunately, they do reproduce. Eventually we’ll all be walking undead or we will be able to drive back their numbers.”
“We should head back to the community center,” Wanikiya suggests.
“The government has fallen. People have to accept that, but when they cling to what they had before, it’s a mistake. It causes death. I discovered an overturned armored car with people fighting over the bills inside. Killing each other for paper money that won’t buy squat anymore.”
“What did you do?”
“After they all killed each other I took two bags of coins and brought them to the weapons smith. He melts down the silver for ammo. If I could’ve carried more, I would have. Coins have value only in how many shells they make.”
“People will want your electricity.”
“The power plant’s our life blood. It allows us to have amenities
and keep surviving. We will eventually have to return to some pre-electric methods, but for now welding and other major food storage is preferable to housing goat’s milk in a springhouse. We also have a small clinic and dentist office, all of which are much better visited with electricity. I don’t know how they drilled a cavity before electricity and I don’t want to experience it.”
Wanikiya laughs. “Even in the apocalypse you try and avoid white people problems.”
“Keep us away from the dam security. I haven’t explored north much. I know the area south pretty well helping to quicken my travels. Along the river we’ve built up the fence to keep biters from washing ashore. We have to have a crew clean the fence line for river debris. We do try and clean up any corpses from the river. Keep contamination at a minimum. I really want your thoughts on those fences, but it’s better to inspect them tomorrow.”
“You’ve taken in a lot of woodland,” Ellsberg notes.
“National forest area gives us some deer. No hunting for now. We want to let the population grow a bit and then we’ll have a hunting season. Adding to our food supply.”
“Those kinds of variables must drive Dartagnan crazy.”
“It’s good for him. He struggles with disorder, but in the end decoding it all calms his mind. He’ll figure out how many deer we hunt and I trust his numbers.”
Wanikiya explains, “We have several farms where we grow corn and soybeans and many small vegetable gardens. The other farms are cattle beef and dairy. We have some goats and keep horses to ride. Hogs are few, but finding more is our next task, along with more chickens. No one in this colony will go to bed hungry.”
“As long as they work,” Ellsberg ponders. “You haven’t said what happens to someone who doesn’t.”
“Like a chicken that stops laying eggs, they will be dinner,” Wanikiya assures.
“We haven’t set up a social security plan, but I know we won’t have welfare within these gates. I’ll put a one-legged man in a tower. As long as he can shoot he’s doing his part. Others weed the gardens or tend the cattle. Since I’ve a large number of guards, we are short on manual labor. But we are also short on room.”
“It seems you’ve plenty of room to expand.”
“As a student of history I was never a fan of the blitzkrieg strategy. We keep our expanding a slow process. We don’t bite off more than we can handle. If we move too fast, complications arise. With this new gathering of land we’ll get more cattle, be able to feed them and have room for more residence. I’ll recruit more people.”
“You hand select everyone?”
“I pick and choose most of those who have made it inside. I try to avoid the most unsavory of characters. And we’ve strict punishments for law breakers.”
“Wanikiya, you weren’t expectantly talkative to the major.” He lies down on the examination table in the classroom converted into a hospital.
“I didn’t want to discuss it in front of him, but while you were gone a group of refugees wanted to enter the camp.”
“Did you give them separate jobs from each other?”
“They refused to turn over one of their number who had a bite.”
“Turning them away was the right thing to do,” he assures his second in command.
“They drew on us, leaving us no choice but to kill them. They wounded two guards.”
Emily’s savior rises up. Wanikiya pushes him back down, “Minor wounds, nothing critical.” The doctor pulls open the curtain. He hangs an x-ray of a human chest on the light board. “You need to rest. Nothing’s broken, but you need to lie down and give those deep tissue bruises time to heal.”
“Doc, you’re making me wish I hadn’t liberated a portable x-ray machine. What day is it?” he asks.
“Friday,” Wanikiya answers.
“I’ll sleep tomorrow. Sunday, are we ready to expand the camp?”
“And we have our town hall meeting.”
“I’ll rest tomorrow, relax on Sunday, and Monday I got to head back out.”
“I’ve no concept of anything outside the fence more important than you letting those bruises heal.”
“Actually, doc, there is. I’ve brokered a deal for a convoy of supplies Dartagnan came up with.”
“We got more cattle than needed and all those items from the distribution center.”
“We’ve got that doctor/patient thing going, doc?”
“It goes beyond any law you decide to make.”
“The military base will collapse soon. There will be no more government food shipment.”
“Dear god. What will happen to all those people?”
“I don’t want to be a heartless bastard, but consider what will keep our group alive. The military overstretched its resources and now they’ll have to abandon thousands.”
The whole of Acheron’s citizens enjoy Sunday brunch together in the multipurpose room of the school. Emily’s savior and Wanikiya sit at a head table near the stage.
“It’s like a big family,” Wanikiya muses as he stirs his eggs into his ketchup.
“You were a gourmet cook, and you put ketchup on your eggs.” He shakes his head in disgust. “What a way to ruin perfectly good eggs.”
“You were just shot, at close range, in a world populated with walking corpses, and you find it acceptable to criticize the way in which I eat my eggs?”
“The human race may be on the way out, but there’s no reason to go out in such an uncivilized manner.”
“Ketchup is a perfectly accepted condiment. Invented by a white man.”
“Actually, it was a Chinese dude.” He snatches the bottle from the table. “Who puts it on a breakfast food? I mean, how bad were the eggs the first person was eating they had to dump tons of processed tomatoes on it?”
“I prepare the food. You gather the supplies. I’ll eat what I cook the way I feel it tastes best.”
“First order of business today will be to ban the use of ketchup at the breakfast table.”
“Then we will have to have eggs for dinner from now on.” Wanikiya smiles.
He laughs, clapping Wanikiya on the shoulder as he rises. He staggers toward the podium, over exaggerating his limp slightly, a day of rest in bed stiffened his leg. Gazing at all the faces, Emily’s smile catches his attention. He knows her look. He’s witnessed it on a hundred teen girls before, just never for him. The two boys next to her take no notice of the way she looks at him. They are too busy trying to impress her for themselves. Men rarely understand a woman’s desires, boys even less so.
Good for her. He’s glad. Interacting with people her own age will make it easier for her to adjust to this new life. He glances toward lots of other faces. He knows them all even if their names leave him. He saved these people, and with their assistance they’ll all continue to survive.
He taps the podium to draw their attention to him. “I’m glad our family enjoys Sunday brunch together. I know I’ve missed a few being on the road. I don’t mind because all of you make this place safe for me to come home to.” They cheer. “Now I’m back. Before we expand the fence line so we can start moving some of you into houses, we need to first welcome the new citizens to our community.” The crowd claps. “I don’t have much of an agenda today. So far the rules we’ve established are keeping us safe. We’ve plenty of food stores this week. So I open the floor to any discussion.”
Several people stand and wait to be recognized. He knows what a few of them want to deliberate.
“Hadley, the gun issue’s no longer open for debate. In order to survive the apocalypse, many of the rules and privileges of our old lives we can’t hold onto.”
“You’ve nine-year-olds packing heat.”
“The dangers we face require gun-toting children. I know it’s scary, but Simon won’t certify anyone to carry who can’t use the weapon responsibly. It saddens me, but childhood has been suspended for everyone to live. I suggest this, you accept everyone should carry, and after we are one hundred percent sure bite
rs won’t get inside our fence, we could look at raising the mandatory carry age. Especially when we start up schools again.”
“You don’t think the undead will ever stop,” Hadley steams.
“From what I’ve seen outside our walls, it’s not going away overnight. I won’t lie to you. I think it will be years…” maybe decades.
“I just want our children to still be able to be children.” She returns to her seat.
Many in the crowd murmur in agreement, but it’s not a sticking point with too many. Even if they don’t like it, these people realize the value of everyone being armed. Besides, since everyone must be trained it prevents some scared parent from just giving a kid a gun out of fear.
“Imagine in fifty years your grandchildren studying what we built here. We’re in a transition society, much like the founding fathers of America were when they scraped the Articles of Confederation and began building the American way of life. We face different challenges but we’ll persevere just as they did.”
He points at a man whose name he doesn’t remember.
“We want to know what happened to Kyle.”
“Evidence confirmed he was guilty of rape. Rape won’t be tolerated. He was disciplined and banished. Only two choices for crimes in the community—death or banishment. I won’t waste resources to keep a convicted criminal in a cage.”
“Banishment is death.” This murmur overcomes the entire assembly.
“Hawthorne wrote that all starting communities need to build two things: a cemetery and a jail. We still have need of a crematorium, but those of you who muck stalls, hoe corn, build the fence or stand guard in the rain, do you want to spend your hours toiling while a criminal sits in a dry, warm cell having three hot meals delivered to them?” The murmur shifts and the logic of what he said appeases the majority. He understands words win battles better than swords.
“Again, when we’re secure, and don’t need as many guards on the fence, we’ll examine lesser penalty for minor crimes, but I won’t debate rape.” The cafeteria remains quiet. He nods at a standing woman, Annabelle.
No Room In Hell (Book 1): The Good, The Bad and The Undead Page 23