by Jack J. Lee
“Well, if you guys use up all the daylight possible for the next three or four days, you should be able to wipe out most of the zombies around your house. Get all the stuff you want packed and ready to be moved quickly tonight. Give me a call when you clear out all the zombies. I recommend you call me instead of driving or walking to my house. Traveling outside is a little tricky now and it’d probably be best for me to pick you guys up.”
“Alright, Mark, we’ll get started on the zombs now and call you tomorrow.”
“Ok, I’ve got some errands to do while it’s light out and then I’m headed to my house. See you guys in a few days.”
I closed up my cell phone. I looked up at Frank and Ryan. I shook my head. Ryan said, “That fucker killed a vampire and is now out in the middle of zombies doing errands. Does that make any sense?”
I said, “Sense or not, it sounds like Mark. Let’s get as many zombies as we can today, while it’s still light out.”
Chapter 11: Mark Jones, September 14th, Year 1
After I killed the vampire, I lay on the ground for what seemed like hours, but was probably just a few minutes. Have you ever been driving for awhile then notice you have no memory of what you’d been doing for the last few miles? That’s what happened to me for the rest of the night. I remember getting up off the ground and deciding to take apart my next-door neighbors’ picnic table, like I’d planned. The next thing I knew, I woke up. My alarm clock said it was around noon.
I had obviously showered and undressed, but I didn’t have any memory of doing this. I walked into my lair in my bathrobe. I turned on the light. Shit! I had just killed a vampire and then had slept with all the lights off in my bedroom. God damn it. I can’t continue to be this stupid. I’m oblivious to the end of the world for six months and almost die by zombie in my tighty-whities yesterday. I kill a vampire, and then sleep in the dark. I’m a frigging idiot.
Just inside the lair from my bedroom door was the disassembled picnic table. On top of the pile of wood was the decapitated head of the vampire I had killed. I had brought the vamp’s body into the lair last night.
The vamp looked like the one from the movie “Nosferatu,” played by Max Schreck. You know the old black-and-white silent flick with the scary-looking bald guy with the big bat-like ears and the needle-like teeth. This was no Edward from “Twilight.” I picked up the head by its ears. Man, it was ugly. I wondered what I did with its body. I have two freezers in my lair where I store meat from my deer and elk hunts. I opened the one I knew had been empty. Yup, the rest of the vampire’s body was in there. The heart wasn’t there; must have left it outside.
I looked at the vamp’s head. I decided that since Bob the zombie was no longer around, the vamp would have to be Bob Junior. I wondered if I could mount it.
I needed to get working. Daylight was being wasted. I wasn’t going to go out in the night again. So what if zombies went to sleep at night, zombies were a lot less dangerous than vampires. I went back into my bedroom to get dressed. When I got back into the lair, Bob Junior’s head was melting. All its flesh was liquefying and dripping off its skull. I had left the lights on while getting dressed. This was proof vampires couldn’t handle being in the light. It had taken about twenty minutes of being in the light to start the dissolving process. It took close to an hour for all the flesh to melt and evaporate into the air. Only Bob’s skull was left. It looked like a normal human skull but had needle-sharp teeth like a predatory fish—not quite like a shark’s, but more like a freshwater predator such as a pike or barracuda.
I needed to find out exactly how long it took to melt a vampire with light. I needed to know how much light was necessary to cause its flesh to melt. I got out my butchering knives and cut into the meat of Bob’s right leg, just below the knee, and chopped off a couple pieces. Cutting into the meat was tough but it could be done. I tried to use the knife to cut into the bone; it felt like I was trying to cut metal. When I had cut off its head last night I had cut through ligaments, not the bone. If I ever fought a vamp again, I needed to avoid attacking its bones. Its bones were like armor. It was lucky that when I fought it last night, I attacked the soft tissues of its throat. I worked in the dark, with just a candle for light. Bob’s flesh wasn’t harmed by the candle light. I didn’t know how long it would be before I could find another vamp body to study. I wanted to save as much of its body and flesh as I could.
The vamp had 3-inch-long claws at the ends of its fingers. The claws on its hands were razor-sharp and they weren’t retractable. Vampires were not meant to be tool users. I guess I would never get a text message from one. The vamp had smaller retractable claws on its toes. If it wanted to run quickly, it would keep its claws retracted, but if it wanted to climb or get a lot of traction quickly it could pull out its toe claws.
I found out that at least two 100-watt bulbs are needed to melt vamp flesh. Within 15 to 20 minutes, the flesh began to melt. This meant you couldn’t use light alone to kill a vamp. Fifteen minutes would be plenty of time for a vamp to kill anyone. Hopefully, a vamp wouldn’t willingly enter a lit room; I planned to keep my lights on at all times.
I cut up the wood from the picnic table and made as many 6-inch-wide steps that I could out of the salvaged wood. I needed to mount the steps on the fences all around my neighborhood. I put on my leather jacket and mountain bike armor, grabbed my bow and the mace I had made yesterday, and went up to the main floor. It took several trips to bring everything I wanted including my cordless drill and a box of a couple hundred screws. I went to my laptop and checked my outside cameras. In front of the house there were about 12 zombies feeding on the Harrisons’ bodies.
Well, it was better to be lucky than good. It’s illegal in most states to bait game, but unethical hunters have been known to leave out food and salt for deer so they get used to coming to one spot. The first day of the hunt, those hunters get easy kills. Without planning it, I have been baiting zombies. All the zombies from my street and several streets over were most likely in front of my house.
I went up the stairs to the window from which I had shot the Harrisons. Medieval English archers could accurately shoot six times a minute with 150-pound bows. I was using a 100-pound bow. I wasn’t as strong as the medieval archers but I was as fast. My vision focused one at a time on each zombie’s head and I slowed my breath so each inhale took the count of three. With every inhale I drew my bow, and at the count of three I released. Time slowed. The zombies didn’t notice the first three being killed. After I shot the fourth, they saw me and started screaming. I was in the zone; I didn’t care. I took 12 shots and 12 zombies were down. The last eight had been staring up at me and all those had an arrow though the right eye.
I looked outside my window, across and up and down my street. There were no zombies around. Counting the arrows I had shot yesterday at the Harrisons, I had 15 out in my front yard. I had a limited number of arrows, and carbon-fiber arrow shafts were going to be hard to replace. I ran down the stairs, leaving my bow and grabbing the mace. I took the time to put on leather motorcycle gloves; I didn’t want zombie juice on my hands. I grabbed my arrows just below the head and pulled them out of the zombies’ skulls. The shafts in the ones in the Harrisons’ heads were broken and not worth salvaging.
I looked around, still no zombies. It looked like the minute or so the zombies had spent screaming hadn’t been long enough to summon more. I needed to get working; I only had a few hours of daylight left. I went up and down my neighborhood, going over fences and setting up steps on either side of each fence. I worked as quickly as I could. It was awkward having to carry everything, bow, mace, wooden steps, cordless drill, and screws. I got steps on the all the fences in the yards near my house before dark. When I got home, I covered all the windows with dark sheets and turned on all the lights.
Chapter 12: Mark Jones, September 15th, Year 1
I set my alarm to wake me up with low-volume music at first light. I took the time to make coffee and eat a goo
d breakfast. It was going to be a long day.
I got up to my hunting window. There were seven zombies feeding on my bait. It took ten arrows to kill them all. When I went down to get my arrows, I noticed the dead zombies weren’t rotting. I remembered reading a dead zombie’s flesh was still full of live viruses and, given enough time, a zombie could heal from a head wound. I took my mace and broke in the tops of all the zombie skulls. I’ve never crushed a skull before. It was like smashing melons—you could hear a thunk, followed by a quiet squishy splash. You didn’t quite hear the squish; you felt it. I had a large pile of bodies out in my front yard and I was grateful I was being spared the stench of rotting flesh. Why didn’t zombies rot?
It was time to explore my neighbors’ homes. I made the decision to use my neighbors’ dining room tables to board up my main floor windows and reinforce my doors. Wooden dining room tables are made up of extremely strong water-resistant plywood. Since I was going to be indoors without a lot of room to run, I put on my leather pants and jacket. I also wore my mountain bike arm and leg armor. I considered wearing a helmet but again decided not to. Having better vision was more important.
As I thought about having to explore unlit houses, my heart rate started to rise. Man, I didn’t want to go up against another vampire. Too bad I couldn’t see through walls. Wait a minute: One of the first things I had done when I started renovating my house was to tear down all the walls so I could insulate it properly. When the house had been originally built in the 1950s, it wasn’t standard practice to use any insulation. I had a drinking buddy at the time who worked as a firefighter. He advised me to use a thermal camera to see where my house needed insulation. He knew about thermal cameras because firefighters use them to look through smoke and walls. Thermal cameras help firefighters find fires in buildings and can also find trapped people. If I could salvage a thermal camera from the local fire station, I would be able to look into a house from the outside and see if there were vampires in it.
When Bob had been alive, he must have had a body temp of at least 120. There was no way something that fast or that strong could have a slow metabolism. Vampires were turbo charged humans. They would need a lot more oxygen than humans. It made sense that nailing a vamp in the heart would bring it down. A vamp needed a constant flow of oxygen and fuel to its tissues. Shut off the blood supply and the vamp would shut down. With a thermal camera, I would be able to see through walls. I could see the vampire before it saw me.
The closest fire station was on 15 West and 1300 South, about two-and-a-half miles northwest from my house. Salt Lake City and its suburbs, like Sugar House, are laid out in a grid pattern. The Salt Lake City Temple is the center and then every street out from the Temple is labeled by its coordinates based on how far north, south, east, or west it is from the Temple. Many streets in Utah are described by coordinates rather than having street names. Before the zombie outbreak, two-and-a-half miles was almost next door to me; now it seemed like a huge distance. I had to decide whether it was better to get the thermal camera first or to explore my neighbors’ homes first. The fire station may not even have a thermal camera. I decided I needed to secure my house and neighborhood first.
When I left my house two days ago, I hadn’t known what to expect. I’d been worried that if a zombie had a chance to scream, I would be attacked by a mass of zombies. I knew now as long as I kept the sound down to a reasonable level, and took all the zombies out in a couple of minutes, I was good. I needed to start gathering dining room tops. I got a backpack and put some tools and a battery-operated skill-saw in it. I thought about bringing my bow, but how was I going to carry a quiver of arrows, and a mace along with my tools? It was easier in books and movies. You always had the tools you needed without ever worrying about how to carry the damn things. I needed to figure out how to carry my mace and bow at the same time.
I went to my next door neighbor’s house, the one on the opposite side of my house from where I had salvaged the picnic table. I knew the Jacksons had a kitchen table and a nice cherry veneer formal dining room table. The back door was locked. I brought out my bump key set. I learned about bump keys from a documentary. Locksmiths in Denmark figured out how to make a skeleton key that can open any pin tumbler lock. They are called bump keys because you put the key into keyhole and then bump and jostle it to get it to work. I’d checked on the internet and found bump keys were cheap. Fiddling around with technology is one of the ways I used to kill time, so I bought a set. Sure, I could have smashed open the door, but there was a good reason to not break through a window or door: noise. I needed to use the skill-saw. If I broke through a window or door, there would be a lot more noise coming from the house.
I opened the door and entered. My mace was ready. I closed the door and moved over to the dining room, which couldn’t be seen from the front of the house. The dining room had a vaulted ceiling that was high enough. I pushed the table over to a corner that backed into two walls and got on top of it. I turned and faced the two openings out of the dining room. I called out, “Hey zombie, zombie, zombie, zombie. Come out to play-ay.” There was no way I was going to be one of those idiots in horror movies that wandered around a dark house just asking to be ambushed. Zombies are attracted to sound. I was going to draw them out where I could see them while I was in an easily defendable position.
When I had looked at the surveillance tapes recorded by my cameras, I tried to see which of my neighbors had left their homes or had been killed. I hadn’t seen any of the Jacksons—mom, dad, or two teenage kids—leave their home.
“Hey zombie, zombie, zombie, come and get it.”
I heard slow footsteps coming toward me. It sounded like all four Jacksons had turned. I was glad I had gloves on. My palms were wet. All of the Jacksons arrived. When they were alive, the entire family had been obese. In the past couple of days since they had turned, they looked like they’d all lost weight. It was subtle; maybe it was just the coloration. I guess being grey would make you look skinnier than being white.
I stepped back. They couldn’t reach me without climbing on the table. I brought my mace down on top of Felix’s head. His head collapsed with a crunch and, as he collapsed, I kicked his body toward his dad to slow him down. This gave me the time to hit his sister’s head just as she was getting to the table. Al Jackson had only been slowed for a second by his son’s body. I struck straight down on his head with so much force the head of my mace went down past his nose. I was glad I had thought to make a mace. If I had used an axe, it probably would have gotten stuck in Al’s head and that would have been bad.
Bashing in zombie heads was a skill like any other. At first, you waste energy and make beginner mistakes. I was learning the exact amount of force necessary to crush a skull. I hit Susan Jackson with a sideways stroke aimed at her left temple. I used the turn of my torso to generate the force. The muscles of my arms were loose. In both golf and baseball, if you try to generate force with your arms you actually lose power. I figured it would be the same with skull crushing. My grip was firm but not overly tight. Yup, it was perfect. Susan’s head collapsed with a minimum of effort.
I called out again and waited. No more footsteps. The skill-saw would be louder than my voice. I walked through the house to make sure all the windows and doors were closed. I did not go down into the basement. It was going to be a long day. I needed another ten table tops.
Chapter 13: Mark Jones, September 15th, Year 1
I entered my 9th house of the day. Some of the houses I had gone into had glass dining room tables. A couple of houses, like the Jacksons’, had two usable table tops. I needed one more table top. I was tired. I should have taken a break. If I had been rested I might have been able to avoid the zombie that attacked me from behind as soon as I entered into the kitchen. I was knocked forward to my knees and hands. Shit! I could feel teeth trying to bite through my leather jacket, between the collar and my shoulder.
Four feet in front of me was a male zombie, probably da
d, and coming down the hallway was a zombie that had been a 12-year-old kid a couple days ago. It was probably mom who was biting me. I had to slow dad down. While still on my knees and one hand, I picked up my mace with my left. I took a wild one-handed swing with my mace and hit the side of dad’s knee. The knee snapped sideways and dad fell to the floor. Ignoring mom, who was still trying to bite through my motorcycle jacket, I rose to my knees, got a two-handed grip on my mace, and smashed it down on top of Dad’s head. Then I took the bottom end of my mace handle and knocked it against mom with as much force as I could, twisting toward her while standing up. It was an awkward move and I wasn’t able to get a lot of force behind the blow, but mom weighed 125 pounds at most, and zombies aren’t particularly strong. So I was able to get her off me and stand up facing her. She had her mouth open, her hands out, grabbing for me. She was getting off her knees.
I was too close to her to get the leverage to smash her head. I took my mace handle and shoved it about a foot into her throat. This gave me the leverage so that, with one hand near my mace head, I could keep her mouth away from me. I was able to grab a knife from a cutlery-set holder and stab mom in the eye. I immediately pulled my mace handle out of mom’s mouth, leaving the knife in the skull, which was good because the kid zombie was coming toward me. I had the time to do an overhead smash on top of this zombie’s head. A 12-year-old kid’s height was perfect for this move.
The only way into the kitchen from the rest of the house was through the hallway. I threw all of the stools from around the granite island in the kitchen into the hallway so if any zombies came, they would have to climb over them.