by Kirk Allmond
“I told you I was strong,” was all he said, as he stepped into the gloomy Wal-Mart back room.
“John, can you be in charge of finding keys to one of these rigs?”
“Marshall, Leo, with me. We’re going to run into a big mess in here. I doubt we’ll find any supers, but I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of slow zombies, and we need to save ammo.”
Marshall was bare handed, and looked around the room. Finally, he settled on the leg of a turned over steel shelf. The leg was a six foot steel tube, one and a half inches in diameter. He folded it in half by leaning it against the wall and stepping on the middle, and then used his foot to crush the end. When he was done, it looked like something that would hurt.
I had taken to carrying Leo’s kukris, but since she was using them, I was holding an aluminum baseball bat. John, of course, only carried guns, but he was checking for keys, and knew to be quiet.
A few steps into the back room of the store, we started hearing a repeated thump, thump, thump. I advanced slowly towards the sound of the thumping. As my eyes finally fully adjusted to the darkness of the room, I saw one of those huge floor polishers sitting on the floor with its cord stretched tight, plugged into the wall. There was a zombie, walking into the cord. When he did, the polisher would tip a little; then it pulled the zombie backwards. As it staggered backwards, the polisher would fall back flat, thump, thump, thump, as it rocked back to its natural position. The zombie took a step forward back into the cord, repeating the process over and over. We all stood there, watching in amazement as the zombie repeated this process a dozen times. We were clearly its target; I believe it would have kept trying over and over until the cord rotted away. Marshall finally stepped forward, swinging his pipe-thing like a bat, crushing its skull. The zombie fell to the floor with one final thump, thump, thump, and will forever be remembered as the polisher zombie. I suppose that’s about the best epitaph a zombie could hope for.
Leo made a quick sweep of the storeroom, and having found no more zombies, we decided to head out into the main part of the store. I chose this particular store because years before they’d done a study. Apparently adding skylights all over the store saved them gajillions of dollars every year in lighting costs. I knew it would be fairly bright in the store.
What I did not expect was that every single zombie in the store would be waiting on the other side of the door. I pushed the lever down on the door handle with my thumb, and it virtually exploded inward on me. Zombies poured through the door in pairs, pushing me down. I fell to the ground and hit my head on the concrete, causing stars to explode in front of my eyes. Marshall waded in with his club, swinging like a cave man. He hit one so hard, it flew backwards out the door, pushing six or eight zombies back out into the store with it. That bought Leo enough time to drag me backwards, before shooting back to the fray. She had her batons in her hands; they spun like helicopter blades, her arms almost invisible, except for the wet thuds they made when they impacted and recoiled off into another shambler. There was only room for the two of them at the door there, but I knew they had to be getting tired. The bodies were piling up and spilling out of the doorway. I think that actually made it easier, as about half the zombies tripped trying to climb the pile, allowing Marshall or Leo an easy shot.
After nearly ten minutes, Leo was starting to flag. I have no idea how much energy it took her to maintain that speed, but it had to be enormous. About halfway through, John walked up behind me with the keys to a tractor trailer. We both just stood there watching.
Marshall stepped up towards the middle, standing on a pile of zombies six or seven deep, and took over keeping both sides of the doorway clear. He was a machine, each sweep of his club sent zombies and zombie parts flying. We’d have some cleanup work to make sure they were all dead, but this was going way better than I expected.
He’d been flying solo for at least two minutes, when he suddenly lost his footing and went down. I saw his club hit the door frame and get ripped out of his hand, as he was dragged backward into the main part of the store.
Leo, John and I charged through the doorway, and once Leo hit firm footing, she bolted off into the store. John raised his revolver and laid five shots out, killing four zombies that were closing in around Marshall. Marshall grabbed one of the dispatched zombies by the foot, and swung the whole thing like a rag doll, connecting with the one dragging him by the foot. It threw the super zombie into a rack of clothing, where it got tangled up in a bunch of leggings hanging on the hangars. In an instant, Leo was there, driving one of her batons through the things eye, and twirling it around, scrambling its brain like an egg still in the shell.
As the remainder of the zombies in the store closed in on them, John opened up with his black semi automatics, killing the last bunch without having to reload.
When we’d all recovered, we took stock of the store. We’d come in through the house wares department; many of the shelves were knocked over. The store smelled like a gigantic sewer monster ate an entire garbage dump, then let it digest for a few days before throwing it up outside in the hot sun, where it sat ripening for a month. We each grabbed shopping carts and headed off in different directions.
Marshall was in charge of clothes. His orders were to fill as many carts full of whatever clothes, socks, shoes, underwear and belts he could find. Specifically he was looking for warm clothes, or clothes that could be layered for warmth.
Leo was in charge of food and hygiene products, she loaded up cart after cart of rice, beans and pasta, as well as toilet paper, napkins, paper towels and feminine products. Next she hit the soap isle, emptying the shelves of every type of soap she could find.
John, of course, went to the sporting goods counter; he loaded up every rifle and bullet in the store, plus enough reloading equipment and materials to keep us in bullets for a long time. I’d noticed he always picked up his shell casings, but just then figured out why.
I had a special project in mind. I stopped first at the kids bicycles, and put four into a cart, and grabbed every spare chain on the shelf. My next stop was the toy section, where I picked up a bunch of large kites. Step three was to automotive, where I loaded up three carts with deep cycle RV/Marine batteries. I packed forty-eight batteries into the carts. The last thing I needed was behind the automotive counter, the keys to the auto parts room. Inside there, I found the truck alternators. I was looking for the big ones, I was hoping to find four, but could only get three big truck alternators, so I grabbed three smaller ones for cars.
It took us about an hour of shopping, plus an hour to clear the zombies out of the store room door. We dragged them to the edge of the loading dock and threw them in a pile out in the parking lot. Once we’d loaded our haul into the semi-trailer, we doused the bodies with lighter fluid and tossed a brand new Zippo lighter onto the pile of corpses.
We used the big rig to push some of the cars out of the way, Leo and I jumped into the Jeep, while Marshall drove the rig home. There was going to be a party at our house tonight! We were exhausted, weary, bruised and battered, but we’d managed a great score, our people would use the stuff we found to survive well into winter.
We walked into the house feeling happy and good about our days work. Tomorrow was the meeting with Colonel Frye; I didn’t believe many of our people would want to go with him.
34. Frye’s Return
I spent the better part of the morning unloading the trailer from the previous night’s haul. We passed out clothing to everyone that needed it; almost everyone got at least three pairs of socks, and a pair of pants. Most people ended up with two pairs of pants and a couple of shirts as well. We were short on a few sizes, mostly kids stuff and larger women’s sizes. Everybody had shoes that fit, pants to work in, clean socks and underwear. We’d have to work out clothes washing, but there were so many logistical details to work out.
I spent the better part of the morning using the rope and pulley system to lift the deep cycle batteries up into th
e loft, while Marshall and John built a wooden frame against the back wall to hold them. I had forty 12v batteries on four shelves. I cut apart two long jumper cables from the barn office and wired each row of ten batteries in series, and then connected all four series, giving me 120 volts, and roughly 2500 amp-hours of electricity. Enough electricity to light up the top of the hill for most of the night. Once all of the batteries were wired, we fitted plywood sheets over the front of the shelves to keep the kids from getting to them, and ran the wires out a hole in the roof.
By the time we’d finished that, it was almost ten-thirty in the morning, and we had some work to do with the tractor-trailer. There was a dirt road that ran up one side of our property. We didn’t want to block the entire highway, but I didn’t want anyone to be able to go up that dirt road in a vehicle. Secondly, there were tall embankments on either side of that road where it met the highway, and I estimated a tractor-trailer would be just a little longer than the width of the road.
Leo met us down there at the dirt road with the back hoe. Once Marshall had gotten the empty trailer jockeyed into position, it took all four of us nearly half an hour to figure out how to unhook it from the tractor. Eventually the tractor was free, and Leo used the bucket on the backhoe to knock the trailer over onto its side. It got a little smashed in the process, but the frame, the strongest part of the trailer, and the wheels were facing the highway. Leo’s last job was to use the bucket to fill the small space at the front and back of the trailer with dirt, and to push a large mound of dirt against what used to be the roof of the trailer. Nothing could easily walk around the trailer, and it would take several tanks to push it out of the way, effectively blocking that road.
It was nearly time for Frye to make his appearance. Marshall parked the big tractor inside the gate, with its flat nose pressed just against it. They could still hook a chain to the gate, but then the rig blocked almost the whole driveway. The gates were connected to very large, solid brick entrance markers.
The rest of the frontage along the highway had very steep, very high banks. Not even a military humvee would be able to climb them. If anyone was going to get on the property, it was going to be on foot, or because we let them drive on.
Leo appeared with a bucket full of cold sodas, with ice, having parked the backhoe, run up to the house, and then run back down here. Mom had really outdone herself showing off; the ice was a nice touch. The four of us had just cracked our sodas when we saw the Colonel coming down the road. He had, true to our agreement, only one truck.
When he got out of the truck, we were sitting on the bench outside the gate. We stood as he approached, and I stuck my hand out in greeting.
“Hello, Colonel Fry. It’s good to see you well.” I said.
“You too, Tookes,” he said, as he shook my hand.
“Colonel, I made your offer to the people, I thought you might want to go up and see if anyone wanted to come with you, but I think you’re going to be disappointed. Care for a soda? They’re cold.”
“I’d love one, and I would like to come inside the wire, Tookes.”
I handed Frye a cold Coke, which he drank while we walked up the hill, the five of us. Frye’s driver stayed with the truck. When we got to the top of the driveway, we veered to the left towards the barn. I stepped up onto the mounting stone, and whistled loudly. Slowly, in small groups of twos and threes, the survivors who were not out in the fields or off on a mission for Bookbinder, gathered.
“Everyone, this is Colonel Frye, the man I told you about.” I said projecting my voice. “He’s offered safety and shelter to anyone who would like to go with him. They’re staying at Mount Pony, right outside of Culpeper.”
“Colonel, would you like to add anything?”
The army leader stepped up on the mounting stone as I stepped down. “Tookes here has done a great job of keeping you all safe up until now. We have word of a very large group of infected heading this way. We think it’s from northern Virginia, heading south. This group has been heading south for almost a week now, they never stop, they don’t sleep, and they don’t eat. They’re making about twenty-five miles per day. They’re just above Warrenton, Virginia right now, they’ll be in Culpeper tomorrow, and pass by here sometime tomorrow night. They’ve been following Route 15 all the way from Leesburg. We happened across your place scouting in advance, trying to clear the living out of their path. We can hide from this horde of infected in the Mount Pony facility. We can lock it down and they’ll pass right by us. If not, we have methods to fight them off.”
“In addition to that, the remnants of the U.S. government are there. The Vice President of the United States is there. The Speaker of the House is there. There is still a United States, and you’re still citizens of it, bound by its laws.”
I was fuming. It was underhanded to wait until now to pull that out. I didn’t know what his game was, but I wasn’t giving in just yet. I didn’t like this guy. It might have been just a case of two alpha dogs going head to head, or it might have been that he was up to something, but either way, I just didn’t trust the guy.
Stepping back up on the stone, I said, “Thanks for that intel, Frye. I know it was difficult for you to share with civilians. I also am here to say, I’ll believe in the U.S. government when they finally do something about this problem. If you have the means to defend your fort, you have the means to take this horde out before it gets to us. If you’re the U.S. government, do your job and eliminate this threat walking on our soil. Otherwise, I’ll take my chances, and I’ll put my faith in my own defenses and my own people. Any of you who would like to go with Colonel Frye, are welcome. If you would like, please come forward.”
Sarah, a woman in her early twenties I’d met the night before, came forward. “Tookes, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave, but my parents and husband are dead, and I’m about four months pregnant. I got pregnant the night the world ended. I haven’t seen a doctor, and I’m so afraid.”
“Sarah, no one will blame you for going and doing what’s right by your baby.”
We waited fifteen minutes in silence -no one else came forward.
“Looks like this is it, Colonel. I’ll walk you back to your truck.” I said flatly.
“You’re all making a big mistake!” the Colonel said, as we walked away.
If his intel was valid, we had a little over twenty-four hours to prepare for a huge wave of shambling undead.
35. The Horde
I met with my team in the dining room. We radioed for Bookbinder to join us.
“Bookbinder, Frye gave us some intel on a large horde coming our way from northern Virginia. He said it’s coming down 15, and that’s going to lead it right across our front gates. I need to know if he was telling the truth. According to him, they’re just above Warrenton right now. I need a pair of scouts to go check that out.”
“I’m on it, sir,” said Bookbinder, as he stood up.
“Hold on, Charlie,” I said. “I need you here; I need you to help me coordinate the defense of this place. I need you to send someone. This is a hard thing to say, but I need all the best guns here, Charlie.” Bookbinder stepped out into the hallway and spoke rapidly into his radio. When he came back in the room, he said “I’m sending Jimmy Spencer and Tom Johnson.”
“John, how many guns and rounds did we get at Wal-Mart yesterday?”
“We got about fifteen thousand rounds of .22, and nine .22 rifles, bringing us to twelve operational rifles of that caliber. We have three hundred rounds for Sammie, and I found something you’ll flip for, Tookes. I’d been saving this, but I found twelve round magazines for your rifle. We have twenty-five rounds for the .50, but they’re range grade, not match. Not going to be as accurate as Sammie, but a lot more power. We have two-thousand rounds of .9mm, and fourteen 9mm guns, four hundred rounds of .45, but only Pearl here shoots .45,” John said, patting his revolver. “Every one of the fire team members has a 30.30, and a thousand rounds in each magazine. That was the b
est haul, twenty-five 30.30's I sniffed out in the storeroom, and almost a complete pallet of ammunition. I could only find six scopes, so the leaders of each fire team each have a scope.”
“How about .40 for my pistol?” I asked.
“About a hundred fifty rounds. You have ten magazines, so you’ll have about thirty rounds loose to carry around.”
“John, that’s balls man, nice work. You might have saved all of our lives. Make sure every civilian who’s ever fired a gun is armed. .22's for anyone over ten who’s ever shot. When that’s done, please come back here, and we’ll brief you on the plan, and get your input.”
“We’re going to need all those not shooting up in the hay loft. Hopefully they can’t climb a ladder. I want two with small caliber pistols and all the ammo we have up there.”
“Marshall, if we take the well pump offline, do we have enough generator to power the welder?” I asked.
“I think so. We’ll have to take the fridges off, too.”
“Good, coordinate that with Mom. I want to take the plow off the old pickup in the carriage house and weld it to the front of the big rig. Its gotta hold, Marshall. When was the last time you welded anything? I haven’t since we fixed the front bucket on the backhoe, but that’s held for what, three years?”
“I welded a bunch last summer, I can handle it.” said Marshall.
“Marshall, its gotta hold.”
“I got it, Vic.”
“Leo, you’ve got the worst of this. You’re going to be doing a lot of running. I need you to kill the ones on the flank, as they walk back. How many miles do you think you can run and fight? Could you cover the last three miles?”
“I could go out six miles, that’s twelve miles round trip, and still be able to fight. I could probably do thirty-five or forty miles, if I was just running, before I had to stop and rest, but that would be mostly to eat.”