Pete spoke up. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to just take shelter in the Conncourse tunnel downtown or something?”
That made sense to me, so I added, “That’s what I was wondering. The library at the college has a huge basement underneath it. Wouldn’t that work just as well?”
Dad shook his head and explained, “No, it wouldn’t. First of all, we need to be as far away from nuclear plants as possible because our food supplies won’t last forever. Not only is the metro area full of the undead, but after the power plants melt down, food around here will be contaminated. With other survivors getting radiation sickness and desperate for something to eat, things are going to get real ugly real fast.”
“In Wyoming, we shouldn’t see any radiation, but if we do, the concentrations will be small enough to just remove some of the topsoil and plant all the crops that we need. If we get there in enough time, we could seal the barns and keep the farm animals put up until the danger is over so that we’ll have fresh milk and eggs, too. It shouldn’t take too long before the air clears and the doctor thinks that because of the way the weather patterns move, the fallout from the East coast won’t even reach us there.”
Jason clarified, “The only nuclear facilities that we would even be concerned with are the two located in California, one in Arizona and another in Washington State. Based on all mathematical projections, and I’ve checked them several times, Wyoming will be the only state that’s entirely safe from a nuclear reactor mishap based on statistics assembled from the Chernobyl occurrence.”
“As you can see, we don’t really have a choice.” said Dad somberly. “Now, you might disagree with my plan and please feel free to tell me what you think, but my advice would be to locate some of the Class A RVs at the dealership off the highway south of town and bring ‘em back here. For those of you who’ve never camped out in one of them, those are the ones that look like buses, but inside they’re just like a furnished apartment, so you’ll be comfortable. We’ll cover the windows with steel hardware cloth to keep anything from getting in if the glass gets broken out and pack ‘em up with as many supplies as we can find. We can weld or screw sheet metal against the sides just in case somebody wants to use us for target practice and it will also keep us safe from the undead. It’s better to take care of the modification before we hit the road. We don’t know what we’ll encounter on the road.”
“If you are in agreement, we’ll leave out as soon as the work is finished. Everybody okay with that?”
Virginia smoothed her blouse and shyly asked, “But, isn’t that stealing, Dan? I mean, none of us have enough money to buy those fancy RVs.”
Dad considered the question a moment before answering. “Virginia, you’re a good woman and I understand your concern, but the rules of society changed the day the apocalypse began. This isn’t a temporary situation no matter what they said on the news before the stations went out. I contract with the government specializing in this type of thing. We’ve been expecting something to happen for a long time. Well, not exactly this, but we knew that America was targeted for something big.”
He had our undivided attention. “If we want to not only survive, but thrive in a safe environment, we have no choice but to leave Oklahoma and head northwest.. Timing is extremely important. I understand what you’re getting at and you’re right. It’s stealing. Trust me when I say that the people who work at the dealerships are probably already dead and even if they weren’t, they’ll understand why we’re taking them.”
Virginia looked over at her husband with fearful eyes. He patted her hand gently. “It’s alright, Honey. I’ll take care of you.”
She nodded her head yes and then leaned over onto her husband’s shoulder and stared straight ahead, immersed in her own thoughts.
My mind is reeling with the fact that I have no choice but to leave my comfortable home and head out on the highway with strangers that I’ve just met toward a destination that we aren’t certain about. My stomach is tied in knots. I trust Dad to make the right call. That isn’t the problem. It’s just that I realize I’ve essentially wasted a life of studying and working towards a degree and career that is now useless. The accomplishments of the last few years have been erased and everything took place virtually overnight. Of course, more painful than anything else is knowing that my mother and sister are gone. My heart is broken and empty inside.
Chapter Nine
RV There Yet?
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
John Steinbeck
This is Dan again. After the meeting this morning, Pete and I decided to take off in the icy morning to bring back the RV’s. It would have been a lot easier if more of us went to help out, but the only ones who know how to drive these behemoths are Pete, Sidney and I. We can’t drag the others along with us. It would complicate things and put them in danger. Don’t like the idea of leaving them in the house alone either. They all seem nice, but they’re still mainly strangers. This isn’t a good time to trust people you don’t know well. The stakes are too high. Sidney and I spent time talking it over this morning before we left and agreed that this is our only choice for now. We’ll have to start training everyone to work as a team and keep themselves safe if they’re going to survive on the road. That’s just the way it is right now. You freeze up and you die.
Fortunately for us, Edmond sits north of four truck stops and one of the largest RV dealerships in the state, so finding what we need isn’t an issue. Since the showroom was closed during the ball drop, there aren’t any creatures around, but we still had our guns at the ready as soon as our boots hit the ground. It’s best not to take anything for granted.
We moved forward slow and cautiously just in case some of the zombies decided to hide inside or around the building. The only way to get in was to break the glass doors at the front of the building. Since the power is off now and the phone lines, it wasn’t really a problem, but there’s always the chance that the alarm will sound outside if it’s on a backup battery and that could lead to trouble since they are attracted to noise.
I picked up a stone that was used for decoration outside and heaved it through the pane of glass. The window must have been double pane glass because although it splintered into cubes, it was still in place. It took another couple of stones to break all the way through. Keep in mind that these weren’t the little pieces of gravel that you find in the driveway. Each one weighed somewhere around twenty pounds and I chucked them as hard as I could. That was just one thick assed pane of glass.
We stood still for a moment tilting our heads in expectation of either moans or the wail of an alarm, but we were in luck. We were met by silence. Taking another look around to make certain nothing was following us, especially with all the noise we made breaking in, we stepped inside and walked across the crunching glass, following the signs pointing to the sales department offices. It made sense that the place to find keys to the vehicles would be in the sales manager’s office, so that’s where we began. We found them after only a few moments hanging in a locked box on the wall. It was easy to bust open, so now the problem was matching the keys to the right RVs.
After about twenty minutes of hits and misses using only the tags attached to the keys as a guide, we located three of them that would be perfect for what we needed. Two of them have twin beds in the back and the other a queen bed. Since we’ll be sharing, this will make a difference. Because price is no object, we chose top of the line models that normally retail for over a quarter million. They are top of the line with fancy additions such as washer/dryer sets, double door refrigerators with ice makers, built-in dishwashers, fireplaces, and double sinks in the bathroom. The way Pete and I looked at it, quality matters when you’re depending on a vehicle to take you a long distance safely and the more pricey models seemed to be built more solid and according to the
paperwork lying on the counters, had thicker insulation. The other perks didn’t hurt either and we knew the ladies would be happy with our choices. I couldn’t wait to show them.
Pete and I headed into the store to locate supplies for our trip and stocked up on everything we needed from white hoses for the water supply, electric power adapters, spare propane containers, spare bulbs and fuses and supplies for the bathroom and sewage system. We even took a few basic parts from the service area such as alternators, batteries, tires, hoses, belts and filters. It added another hour onto our stay, but if we didn’t get these things now, we might not find what we needed on the trip. Better to be prepared.
Getting in and driving the RVs off the lot was the easy part and it felt good to be out of the cold and in a warm heated coach. Next, we had to top off the tanks and that meant that we would be heading down to the truck stops just off the interstate about five miles away. We took back roads to avoid the pileups we knew would be there and chose to stop at the Flying J. The truck bays are large, so it’s more likely that they will have one open.
Truck stops are open twenty four hours a day so the truckers can take a break from driving to eat, shower and shoot the shit with their buddies or spend some time with a lot lizard if they have the inclination. They park their trucks in the lots out back and sleep in the cabs on a fold down bed. Over-the-road truckers pretty much live out of their trucks, so they have all the comforts of home inside of them – well, at least everything that will fit. There are small refrigerators with freezers, flat screen TVs with Blue Ray and even porta-potties in some.
A truck stop is a hotbed of vice, too. When you hear someone saying on the CB that they’re selling candy, it means they’re dealing drugs. Women walk the lots and they’re not all drivers, wives and girlfriends. In fact, most of them are what the drivers refer to as ‘lot lizards’. They’re prostitutes that move from truck to truck servicing the men who stop there for the night. It makes you wonder how many wives have caught venereal diseases from husbands who got it on the road and passed it along.
Not all truckers are into the vice scene, though. Some of them are good family men who are doing the public a service and they work their asses off to make sure it gets done. Everything Americans have in their home is transported by truck. Everything. If you bought it, they brought it. I respect these men because they live their lives inside of a box and don’t have time for relationships. Their manners are forgotten after a while, but the country runs on eighteen wheels and somebody’s got to do it. In my opinion, they don’t get enough credit for their sacrifice.
We drove the RVs from the dealership to the truck stop to top off the tanks and grab some CBs, antennas and other equipment that we might need on the road. Things were going good and we had stuffed our supplies in the storage compartment and had just finished filling the last tank when a group of zombies took a notice to us and crawled out from under some trailers to have themselves a human snack.
Now, I know that they aren’t supposed to come out in the daytime and we tried to stay as quiet as possible, but I guess we didn’t do a good enough job because here they came shuffling around the corner. There was a big guy up front that must have weighed three hundred pounds easy and looked like he needed a bath even before this all happened. His hair was stringy and ratted.
He had a week’s growth of hair on his face that didn’t grow there after he turned and cheap tattoos up and down his bulk arms. To his right was a woman tripping over gold colored high heels with a wig dangling lopsided off her head and sporting long red fingernails. One breast was hanging out of her barely-there top and her skirt was so short that as she moved her legs to shuffle along, it was easy to see that she wasn’t wearing any panties. I couldn’t help but wonder if the trucker was the one she had been with when she turned because his belt was undone and the fly to his pants was open. The giant was having a hard time walking without tripping over the pants that were almost falling down. The two of them together made a frightening sight, but I could hardly contain a laugh at the same time. It was like a bad remake of the Keystone cops.
I’ve seen some disgusting things in my time, but this had to have been some of the worst. Even the blood and guts running down the front of the two zombies trailing them wasn’t as bad as seeing those characters and knowing that no matter how dirty they seemed, it wasn’t much different than how they lived before this happened. I’ll never understand how people can live like that.
The answer to our situation should have been a simple one. We’d just jump in the RVs and head back to the house. Not a big deal. The problem we had was that there were three RVs in the fuel lane and only two of us were here to drive them. Since the dealership is just down the road, we just brought them straight here, then I planned to follow Pete back to the house, bring him back and do it again until we got them all back. With zombies stumbling around trying to get to their dinner, our original plan was shot all to hell.
Seeing no other solution, I ran and hopped into the front RV and motioned for Pete to join me. He didn’t hesitate, but just climbed in and locked the door behind him. Since we didn’t have the CBs installed yet, I couldn’t have talked to him without it being face to face. I drove off as fast as I could maneuver around these nasty things. The odor was horrible even through the filtered air of the coach. They smell like road kill or rotting meat and it’s hard not to gag, but this wasn’t the time to indulge in things like that so I sucked it up as I drove around the lot.
There must have been about fifteen or twenty of those things following us by now, but since they were shambling along at a snail’s pace and we were driving, it wasn’t too hard to get away from them. We couldn’t leave the RVs, though. They were already fueled up and ready to go. What we needed was a distraction. I drove across the street to the side part of the Flying J where the cars park in front of the restaurant entrance and glanced around to see if we were alone. So far, so good.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked Pete.
He was apparently one step ahead of me because as I slowed, he stepped out and began yanking on door handles of the newer cars in the lot until there were multiple alarms blaring. Around the corner came the undead to check out what was making the noise and try to get a bite of meat, meaning us, so we hurried out of there. Neither of us planned to be on the night’s menu. I drove back to the truck lot and we picked up one of the RVs, drove it a mile down the road then hurried back to get the other before the alarms died out and the zombies came back. An hour later, we had all three of them home and with Jason and the women helping were working on installing the rest of the equipment that we picked up while my daughter held a rifle and kept watch.
It took us until dark even with the extra hands to finish up and we almost didn’t make it inside before the sun went down. When Sidney reminded us for the third time that the sun was setting, we didn’t even bother cleaning up the mess we’d created, but just dropped everything where it stood and raced inside, locking up after ourselves as we went.
Chapter Ten
This is How We Roll
“The key to life when it gets tough is to keep moving. Just keep moving.”
Tyler Perry
It’s Sidney. It was a long day and we were tired, so we ate a quick meal then went to bed early. Pete and his wife are used to getting up with the chickens, literally. They only agreed to take my bed after some arguing because they didn’t want to be bad guests. Jason is using the spare room, but offered to share with Dad, who opted to stay in the front room with me. Nicole passed out on the sofa under a thick comforter while Dad and I made due with the two recliners. It wasn’t too bad of an arrangement except that I couldn’t seem to find the right position and it didn’t help the situation that every time I moved, Coco woke up. By the time the sun finally rose, I gave up on getting a full night’s rest and instead slipped into the kitchen to start the coffee and begin making a big breakfast for the trip. I had a feeling we’d need the extra energy to make
it through the long day ahead of us.
We had three deluxe RVs to drive on our adventure to Wyoming. They are ugly as sin on the outside because of the metal sheets attached to the frame and all the windows covered with hardware cloth, but the American Heirloom that I’ll be driving is extremely luxurious inside. It has everything a girl can need to be comfortable and it’s a shame that I can’t take time to enjoy it, but have to drive all day instead. There’s a high end home theater system, two 46 inch LED flatscreen televisions with Blue-Ray, a satellite system, an IPad controller for the lights and blinds, and even a central vacuum system. There are three enormous slideouts, so when the coach is stopped for the night, there’ll be plenty of room to move around and relax in. Heck, it’s nicer than my own home.
The metal plating on the outside really doesn’t bother me anyway. It’s not like we were trying to compete with the Joneses or impress the neighbors and to be honest, who is out there to see it anyway? The zombies? The main thing to remember is that it can save a life. That’s good enough for me. The Joneses are probably ghouls now anyway.
It would have been best if we could have traded off drivers and travelled 24/7, but not all of us know how to drive them and the zombies are more active at night, so we’ll have to find a safe place to park them after dark and hole up for the night. We’ve talked about it and it’ll be best if we can find some type of garage or fenced in area where we’ll be safe and able to move the slides out. Even so, we will need to take turns at night guarding the area. The best way to do that is to have someone perched on top one of the RVs.
Pete and his wife will be driving and living in a Villager Highland Air that has the relaxed look of a country home. Nicole is going to bunk with me in the Heritage and Dad is sharing a Villager Deluxe Edition with the doctor. Only two of them have twin beds, so Pete and Virginia will stay in the RV with the queen bed. Thank goodness this isn’t the 1950s where married couples slept in separate beds and didn’t show affection in public. You have to wonder how any babies were born back then with their prudish way of thinking.
Nuclear Undead (Book 1): Wake the Dead Page 11