by Chesla, Gary
Then there was the fact that they had just found out what they had been eating. They didn’t even know if they wanted to think any more about that.
Their minds were overwhelmed. What had happened and what it all meant was more than they wanted to think about.
Their minds only escape was to sleep.
They were afraid to sleep, but they were more afraid to stay awake and listen to the sounds that came from the direction of the fort. The loud crackling coming from the fire as the old dry wooden walls burnt, people yelling and screaming as they fought, died and burned. There were other sounds that they could hear that they hadn’t been able to identify.
They didn’t want to think about any of this right now.
They would deal with what all this meant when they woke up in the morning, if they woke up.
The secure feeling of sleeping in a fort with walls and guards to protect you had given them back the concept of tomorrow. Tomorrow they would do this or they would do that. They planned for tomorrow.
Now, they would be returning to living one day at a time. Tomorrow would be something to deal with when and if it came.
They all feel asleep. Their minds shut down to escape what it couldn’t or didn’t want to think about.
Chapter 21
Bear and his biker friends looked down at the fort from the second story window of a house on North St Clair Street. The street sat up behind the fort. The gang had come to the house earlier in the evening after their failed attempt to rush the fort and get in through the main gate.
They had been taken completely by surprise when the large stones and flying spears rained down on them, decimating the riders and jamming them up at the intersection.
When Bear realized they were sitting ducks for the fort’s weapons as they tried to get through the downed riders and disabled bikes, he signaled for them to get away from the intersection so they could regroup.
It was unbelievable that of the thirty bikers he came with, only ten men remained. Bear was impressed with the forts capabilities. The forts impressive weapons would just make it that much easier for him to defend himself when he took over the fort. To defend himself from all those ugly dead bastards that were heading this way. The ones that had forced him to leave his hangouts around Latrobe.
The few new members of the gang that had survived the encounter with the fort were seeing red from rage. They had wanted to go right back and burn the fort to the ground. Bear convinced them to see things his way.
Bear was upset they had their ass kicked, but he wasn’t too disappointed. If they had been able to take over the fort when they first arrived, that would have been OK, but he knew being boxed up in the fort with all the crazy assholes in his group would soon lead to unrest and problems. He knew, temporarily while they laid low in the fort and let the huge hordes of the dead pass by, he would need to thin out the ranks. He planned on only keeping around the small core of men that he trusted.
Being cooped up in the fort with all thirty of the group would have never worked. They would have ended up killing each other and would probably end up burning down the fort around them.
This had never been his goal or at least his first choice.
He needed just enough men to help him control the fort.
When the dead passed on and he could find more gas, he intended on getting back on the road. He had never liked hanging around one place for very long.
For now he needed the fort and the supplies the fort had.
When they went back to the Giant Eagle parking lot to regroup, he convinced the remaining men that it was not in their best interest at this time to kill everyone and burn the fort to the ground. They needed the fort for a week or so until the oncoming dead moved on.
He told them that running back like wild animals would only result in most of them getting killed. They could still take the fort and get the revenge they all wanted, but they needed to be smart and have a plan. He had a plan.
All they needed to do was scare the people in the fort enough to let them come in.
Fort Ligonier was a fort within a fort. They didn’t need both parts of the fort. All they needed was the inner fort to ride out the dead. Bear convinced them to be patient.
Wait until the middle of the night when they were asleep, then scare the hell out of them.
They didn’t have enough gas left to go anywhere, but they had enough gas left to set a few fires. Set parts of the outer wall on fire. The sight of the wall burning in the night would scare the hell out of the people inside. They would send people out to put out the fire.
After the gang would set the fires, everyone inside would be distracted. They could climb over the wall and move around among the men trying to put out the fire, and take out them out one by one. They would never expect something like this.
It should be easy, most if not all of the men that came out to put out the fire would be unarmed. They could kill most of them before the fort figured out what was happening.
They would then have control of the outer yard of the fort.
A well placed Molotov cocktail tossed over the inner wall to show them what would come next if they didn’t open the gates and let them come in peacefully, would be all it should take.
They knew there would probably be a lot more of the fort people left in the fort than bikers after they were inside, but that didn’t worry Bear. One of his gang was worth more than ten of those fort wimps.
The bikers found a two story house with a clear view of the fort, than sat and watched as they filled the bottles with gas. They were easily able to gather all the bottles they needed as they walked to the fort from the Giant Eagle parking lot. Ligonier like all the other towns and cities, looked to be little more than a garbage fill with all the trash, furniture, abandoned cars and blowing paper that covered the streets and yards.
They watched, planned and slept, waiting for the night to come so they could get their revenge and take the fort.
The bikers waited until well after midnight. They watched the fort and the people that moved around inside the outer yard inside the walls. The glow given by the camp fires let the bikers clearly see most all of the fort activity.
When they felt it was time, they sent four men, one to each side of the fort. The rest of the group went to the back of the fort, the area with the fewest burning campfires and the easiest area to climb over the walls and begin to blend in with the people in the fort. After the others had thrown their fire bombs, they would run to the back of the fort and climb over the walls and blend in with the others.
When Bear gave the signal, the fireworks started.
The old dry wooden posts, the part of the fort that Bill and his friends always knew could be their Achilles Heel should they ever be attacked by any gangs, proved to be even more of a weakness then they had assumed.
When the fort was originally build, and even when it was rebuilt in 1954, the solid freshly cut wooden posts were strong and difficult to set on fire. Many flaming arrows were shot into the first fort, but did little damage and the fresh posts gave the fort’s occupants plenty of time to douse the flaming arrows with water before any serious fires could start.
The posts that had stood here at the tourist attraction fort for the last almost one hundred years had been dried out from the many years of the sun beating down on them. The posts had been invaded by burrowing insects. Time, sun, insects and decay had taken its toll on the old fort.
The fort had provided a great refuge from the dead and had helped the occupants fend off many attacks by the dead.
Fortunately they had managed to avoid an all-out battle with any fire tossing gangs.
When Bear gave the signal and the fire bombs were tossed against the walls, the fire caught quickly and spread like wildfire.
The fire bomb tossed into the inner fort quickly ignited the sheds and meeting hall.
The fires on the outer walls, quickly spread to the cottages. The flames were so intense, it was quickly dete
rmined that the outer fort was lost. The men sent out to fight the fires were quickly recalled to help fight the fires blazing inside the main fort.
The bikers didn’t have enough time to blend with the fire fighters and were soon exposed when the men from the fort were called back.
The archers on the inner walls soon started picking off the bikers. The bikers retreated and gathered in the middle of the outer yard on the fort road between the front gate and the main fort gate. Everything around them was blazing with an intense heat hitting them from every direction. They were now out of the accurate range of the bows, but were trapped inside the burning walls.
The archers kept the bikers at bay and watched as they huddled helplessly between them and the outer walls, trying to protect their exposed skin from the searing heat.
Inside the main fort, they fought the flames coming from the burning buildings. The walls of the main fort stood resisting the fire. Days of being drenched by the water that poured over the walls from Shaun’s gutter system, had soaked them enough to resist the flames. However, the gate had been open all day, while the walls were being soaked, the gated had remained dry. The gates caught fire and burned.
When Bear and the two remaining bikers saw the gate on the inner fort collapse and fall away from the walls, they made a dash towards the opening in an attempt to escape the heat and flames around them.
The archers quickly killed two of them. Bear retreated back down the fort road and out of the bows range.
It was a losing battle against the burning sheds inside the main fort, but the standing walls still offered the occupants some protection from all the heat and flames that surrounded the main fort.
Bear was drenched in his own sweat from the intense heat. He knew if he didn’t get out of the fort or into the inner fort walls soon, he wouldn’t last too much longer.
He quickly turned as a loud crashing sounded behind him.
He turned and felt relief at the sight of the outer gate crashing down out onto the street in front of the fort.
The feeling of relief only lasted for a few seconds.
The bright flames from the burning walls over the last hour had acted like a beacon. Thousands of the dead had been attracted and had made their way to the fort.
The dead began to pour into the fort through the breach in the wall made when the gate collapsed.
Bear’s hope of escape disappeared. He now had a choice. Turn and go up to the inner fort and die at the hands of the archers on the wall, or die at the hands of the dead.
He had no intention of giving those bastards up in the fort the satisfaction of killing him.
He turned towards the dead making their way towards him. He began to swear and yell at the top of his lungs as he ran into the oncoming horde of the dead.
Maybe, just maybe, he would become one of them after he died and be able to do in death what he had been unable to do when he was alive. Get in the fort above and kill all those arrogant bastards.
The dead swarmed over Bear, he was gone in a few moments. The swarm continued onwards towards the open gate at the inner fort.
The dead didn’t have the intelligence to fear the flames.
All their brain told them to do was get the living. The living was here and they continued on.
The archers on the inner walls began shooting their arrows at the approaching dead. Many of the dead fell, only to be replaced by the thousands that followed.
The archers soon ran out of arrows. The people in the fort climbed the platforms to escape the dead, but as the dead flooded into the inner walls, the platforms soon collapsed, spilling the living into the out stretched arms of the dead below.
The dead continued to pour in through the openings where the gates had been on the walls of both parts of the fort. For hours into the early morning, the flames burned, fueled by the wood of the fort and the decaying bodies of the dead.
A heavy smoke hung in the air over the fort and the town of Ligonier.
The smell of death and the smell of burning flesh, both flesh of the living and the dead, filled the air, here and for miles around.
Chapter 22
Shaun woke up coughing from the heavy smoke in the air and the gross smell of death that assaulted his nose.
Megan sat up next to him. “My God the smell is horrible.” Megan said as she looked around the attic. Light was flowing in through the vents and up from the openings near where the roof came down to meet the sides of the house.
“Is the house on fire?”
They looked at the smoky air that filled the attic as the rays of light streaked through the smoke.
“I don’t know?” Shaun answered as he studied the attic. “I don’t feel any heat. If the house was on fire, we would feel the heat up here in the attic.”
Shaun crawled around and felt the boards on the attic floor. “It feels cool, but I better go look so we don’t’ find ourselves trapped up here.”
Doug and Lisa watched Shaun as Lilly stayed close to Megan.
Shaun moved over and slowly pulled up the trap door they had used to get into the attic last night.
More light flooded into the attic as Shaun moved the door.
Shaun looked down through the opening. Smoke hung in the air, but there was no rush of heat as he looked down.
“Doug, you want to come with me to look into to all this smoke?”
Doug crawled over towards Shaun. “Sure.”
After studying the room below and listening for any sounds, Shaun dropped down into the closet below. Doug followed and they walked out into what had been a teenager’s bedroom. A single bed sat against the wall and a poster of some unknown rock star hung on the wall near a dresser.
Shaun walked over to the window and looked outside.
It appeared it was trying to be a sunny day, but the sun struggled to get through all the smoke that hung in the air.
The window faced town. The empty streets disappeared into the smoke as Shaun looked out at the streets and houses.
He walked out of the room and crossed the hall into another bedroom. This room was more modestly furnished with a double bed, dresser and chest of drawers.
He looked out the window. In the distance, past the houses and streets was where the fort was, but he couldn’t see much because of the smoke.
He walked back across the hall and into the room with the attic door. He looked up the opening. “I think the house is OK. It must be all the smoke coming from down at the fort.”
“Can we come down?” Megan’s face appeared at the opening.
Shaun looked up at her face. “Sure, hang down and I’ll grab you.”
Megan dropped the back packs down to Shaun, then the girls started to drop down through the door.
Lilly spotted the bed and walked over and dropped down. The box springs squeaked as she made herself comfortable. “I haven’t laid on a real mattress for months!” She smiled.
Shaun opened the back packs and dumped out the contents. He held up two packs of crackers and a small bag of pretzels. “This is all the food we have left. Before we decide where we are going, we need to see what we can find around here. Eat up! We are going to need some energy.”
Shaun opened the crackers and spread them out on the bed and then dumped out the bag of pretzels.
Megan reached out for a cracker and took a bite. She started to chew, then gagged.
Shaun looked at her wide eyes. “Meg, try not to think about it.”
“I can’t help it!” She replied.
“Just remember, we didn’t know!” Shaun said. “Maybe what we ate wasn’t……you know.”
“I’ll try to keep telling myself that.” Megan replied as she forced herself to chew and swallow the dry crackers.
“It wasn’t what?” Lisa asked.
“Stale!” Shaun smiled.
Lisa smiled and ate her cracker.
After they finished their breakfast everyone sat around and just looked at each other.
The unspok
en question on their minds was, “What now?”
To break the silence that was more like a thunderous roar with all the uncertainty that surrounded them, Shaun said. “Let’s see what was left in the house?”
They all got up to follow Shaun, but he didn’t go too far and opened another closet door in the room.
“Hey Meg, look at this.” Shaun said as he stepped aside, revealing a closet half full of girl’s clothing.
Lilly looked at her homemade poncho as her eyes lit up and a big smile spread across her face.
“Why don’t you girls see if there is anything here you can use? Doug, you and I should check out the closet in the other bedroom.” Shaun sounded excited.
Shaun and Doug started for the other room as the girls started taking clothes out of the closet.
Shaun came back a few minutes later holding more women’s clothes in his arms from the larger room’s closet.
“Here are some other things I found.”
“That’s good.” Megan smiled. “Most of the clothes in this closest will fit Lilly, but be a little snug on me and Lisa.”
Shaun went back and joined Doug. They found a half dozen pairs of casual pants, shirts and jackets.
They each selected a heavy pair of brown Levi’s and a black sweatshirt. Fortunately there were a few belts hanging in the closet. The clothes had belonged to a guy that was heavier than either Shaun or Doug, but the belts held everything in place. The rest of the clothes they divided up and began to stash them in their back packs.
“It feels great to wear something different.” Doug said.
Shaun smiled. “Something clean that doesn’t smell.”