Knight of the Dead (Book 3): Fortress

by Smorynski, Ron

  “So you, Cory, want to fight? Good. Eva right? You can help with armor. Help my wife build more for all of you, okay?” Dad said.

  “Absolutely,” Eva answered, shaking her head with hope and a sad smile. His wife, at the door, gave her a thumbs up.

  Another woman stood up from the seats. She was with a shaggy man. Both looked like they were in their late 20s. “I'm Trish. This is my brother Jake. I'm, I don't know if blessed or lucky, but Jake was visiting me. And without him, I don't know if I would have made it. I lived on the first floor and we were able to make it up to the others. He was able to kill a few zombies. So he's pretty good.”

  Dad nodded to Jake who waved back.

  “Jake likes to hunt and stuff. So he can help with fighting, with guns. Right Jake?” Trish, keeping her cool, turned to her brother.

  Jake nodded. “Oh yeah, sure. Wherever the boss wants me.”

  “And I can help with armor or carrying things or watching the kids. Will we, us fight? Well I see you have women in armor with sword things...”

  “Sword things?” Dad smiled.

  Everyone let out a relieving chuckle or laugh.

  Lena looked at her 'sword thing' that Trish was motioning to, her naginata.

  “Okay, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I don't know what that is,” Trish blushed.

  Lena answered, “Naginatas!”

  “Yes, you're going to learn how to fight. All of you are,” Dad said. “It's just a Japanese polearm, a halberd, a spear...”

  “Okay, great, cuz I want to!” Trish answered. “That's all.” She sat down. Jake held her hand, which calmed her.

  “And you?” Dad asked, motioning to an older woman. She wasn't very old, looked solidly built, perhaps Hispanic but still American looking.

  She wiped her nose with her sleeve as she stood up. There was a great weight to her. The others knew her story and sat glum as she found some strength to speak. “My name is Amanda. I lost everyone. My family. I'm sorry,” she turned to look down but recovered as quick as she could. She motioned for the other survivors to not comfort her. “I can help. Best I keep busy. May the Lord take me soon. I will do anything.” She nodded quickly and sat down, bravely holding in her emotions.

  Dad waited a moment, then catching two guys eyes nodded for them to speak up.

  “Hi, first off, thank you for saving us. We were not going to make it. We got all the water and food we could. A few went out. We saw them get killed in the stairwell, so we hid. We didn't know how to fight. But thanks. I'm Trek, and this is Eddie. We're roommates. We had two others. We just worked, well I worked at Starbucks and was trying to get into the gaming biz. But I'm not very good, so just played them more than worked on my stuff. So... I don't know what I can do but I will do whatever you say. I'm scared man, I'm just scared. And I appreciate that you aren't, you know… scared.”

  A few smiles and a snicker came out.

  “Yeah, so yeah and Eddie here,” Eddie nodded as Trek continued. “Eddie and I, we were just stoners... just chilling and shit. Oh, sorry for my language.” He glanced at Amador's kids. Charlotte and the others were gone.

  “Eddie?”

  Eddie looked at Dad.

  “You look like you work out?”

  “Yeah, a little but not a lot,” he said stoically.

  “Can you fight?” Dad asked.

  “I dunno. I think so. I will,” he replied. “Have to...”

  “We'll train you. Both of you. You have to fight. You'll work under Nick, helping him out. Got it?” Dad motioned to Nick who nodded. Both waved meekly to Nick and sat back down.

  “Who are you?” Dad asked gently, to a young lady. She was bone skinny, barely visible in her large dirty clothes and ragged hair. She must have been a red head or ginger, but with the dirt and filth, she seemed ghostly.

  “I'm nobody,” she replied.

  Ellie reached over and put her hand on the girl's small shoulder to comfort her. But the young lady leaned away.

  Dad walked closer, intimidating. “I know, you are nobody, but I still want to know your name.” He wasn't being nice.

  She glanced around from under her ragged reddish dusty hair.

  “Look at me,” Dad said sternly.

  She looked up at him.

  “What is your name?”

  “Ginger,” she said.

  “Ginger? That's good. Are you going to work and help out around here?” Dad asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay, good. Help Jerry and Julianne, and Beth who is in charge,” Dad said, looking at all three of them. They all waved slowly. “They do the farming stuff, food stuff. Got it?” Dad bent over to look at her closer. He gave a gentle smile.

  Ginger nodded.

  Dad stood back up, walking back to the main whiteboard. He turned and saw one last guy. Through all the days of starving and near death, the guy still had a plump face. Dad was suspicious of that. “Who are you?”

  “Me?” he looked around at everyone.

  Dad waited glum.

  “Oh, I'm uh… Rick Gomez, but I'm not Hispanic... just got the name for some reason.” Rick was white. He certainly looked like he lost a lot of weight. “I was uh a school bus driver actually, then Uber driver, dog walker, and comedian, trying... comedian... not funny comedian.“ He looked for a laugh. No one laughed. “So that's about the no-skills I got.”

  Dad nodded. “So you can drive that school bus outside?”

  “Yeah, why? We getting the hell out of here?”

  “No,” Dad responded.

  Rick leaned in waiting for Dad to say something more, assign him something. There was silence.

  17. Planning

  “We have a lot to figure out, to plan, to do,” Dad finally said. “I am ready to do it, to go out there. Those things out there have an alert system, attracting others. Their daisy chain of alerts and swarming needs to be countered. You all are aware of that, that if we create noise or a ruckus in here, it can start an avalanche of cannibals surrounding us, right?”

  Rick Gomez raised his hand quick.

  “Yes?”

  “What do I do?”

  “You train to fight.”

  “Oh okay. You know I'm just a driver and comedian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh—kay.”

  “You think the zombies care when they attack you?”

  Rick froze a moment, finally able to summon an ounce of courage. “No.”

  “Yeah...” Dad turned to Lena and Lisa. He looked at them a bit too long. Lena shrugged 'what'? He thought a moment but couldn't help himself. “I saw some guys, students, on the roof at Fairfax, at your high school.”

  “What!?” Lena stood forward, ready.

  “They were on the roof, football players or something, alive.”

  “What? Dad, we gotta go,” Lena huffed. Lisa became excited too.

  “That's far, to rescue some guys,” Steve responded.

  “What about Sean? Where's he?” Randall asked with angst.

  Lena and Lisa were suddenly shaking, not with excitement, but with terse anticipation, with suffering hope. They looked at each other with desperate intentions.

  “We can do it,” Dad said, not thinking straight.

  “Dude, seriously? Way down there? How?” Steve asked, palming his tired head.

  “The Horde chased after me, down Fairfax. They opened up the street. We can take a car down, rescue them, and race the car back up. I can distract whatever horde forms up with another car or parked bike, lead them away. Then the guys, with our help, can sneak back here.”

  “Yes Dad yes, please, please, save them!” Lena said.

  “Who are they? Who is it?” Lisa asked to no one, wondering.

  “That sounds complicated, and far, and anything could go wrong,” Randall said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Dad said, darting his eyes to Lena and Lisa, and to his wife. He wasn't so sure why he wanted to save them. He said aloud, “If those guys can survive up on that roof, and they played f
ootball, they must be fighters. We can always use a few more fighters.”

  “We can train them Dad! We must know those guys. They're athletes. They'll fight. They just need weapons,” Lena said excitedly.

  “Okay, okay, calm down,” Dad finally said. “We'll do it.”

  They hopped a little too giddy. But Dad saw that it gave the others encouragement too.

  “That's Plan number 1. But I got some other ideas, and I want you Nick…,” Dad motioned to Nick who was nearly asleep.

  “Huh, whaah?” Nick sat up.

  “Nick, listen up, you are in charge of the tenders, the battery chargers, the motorcycles, the cars.”

  “We only got the two, and Sean's, if... when he returns,” Nick said, stretching and trying to wake up.

  “We still need to get the bikes from the apartment where we rescued everybody,” Steve added impatiently.

  “I know, that's why we need to plan this out,” Dad answered. “Lena, Lisa, I want you to be in charge of training, teaching the new people the basics of sword swinging.”

  Lena and Lisa nodded, giving a thumbs up.

  “But, if we go out, Tom, I want you to pick up training the new people.”

  Tom shrugged, “Well, I'm not very good at it. But, you got it.”

  “Even the women,” Dad said, looking at Julianne and the old lady Ellie. “My wife will be making armor. Kristina, Eva, Amanda if you can, you help her.” They all nodded positively, anything to keep them busy and useful.

  “Rotate with training. Everyone trains,” Dad continued.

  Kristina, in some odd chipper mood, saluted.

  “Beth, you're in charge of farming, food, how much we have and when we need to get more. You gotta let me know our forecast, uh, you know, how much we have and what we need. Water too!” And get these folks to work too. He looked at Jerry, Julianne, Ellie and Robert. He figured the old folks could handle those mundane yet essential tasks. Being old and wise… wiser, he figured they'd be responsible too.

  “We're okay for now. Well, we had a couple months’ worth of supply. But with the new people, I'll have to re-measure, or see how long it can last,” she said.

  “That's good. Jerry, Julianne, you help her, especially with the farming.”

  They nodded.

  Dad noticed Ginger. “And you too.”

  She nodded.

  “If you new people need to rest up, heal up, before you help out, I'll give you a day... or two. But time is essential. I want you to train if you can. All of you. And we need to start fortifying this place. Amador?”

  Dad had to speak up to get Amador's attention in the back. Amador looked up.

  “We need you and Nick to fortify this place, the windows. We'll do a walk around, figure out what we gotta do, where we can defend from if they get in. We need uh... contingency plans, fall backs. Oh, oh, and silence people. Out there, in the courtyard or on the school grounds, we need to be silent. Understand?”

  They all nodded.

  “We need to be quiet. With gardening, hammering, even warning about zombies, we need to be quiet. Even hand signals can't be too fast. They are alerted by fast motion. We have got to figure that out. And downtime, if you need quiet downtime, Benjamin, over there, has got the phones, and is listening on the radio. If you need a phone or something to do, something to watch, he's your man. Plus he's the doc.... for now.”

  “Hey, I'm here to help,” Benjamin smiled humbly.

  “What about using fire?” Nick asked, raising his hand. “You mentioned it before.”

  “Yeah, against The Horde,” Dad remembered, pacing. “I remember. I think anyway, that those zombies are actually repelled by burned bodies, by their own being burned. I think... I think if we can burn some bodies and place them around, we could repel them, and then go out and get food. The grocery store is just a few blocks away. It still has a lot of dried foods. And the pet store has a lot of dog food. The thing is, none of that is going to last unless we figure out how to move around and especially, how to move those hordes away from us.”

  “I can figure that out too, flamethrowers, malatovs, stuff like that,” Nick said. “Maybe...”

  “Remember Nick, we can't light up the city. We can't burn it all down. We'll be burning our food, our supplies, everything. And there isn't a fire department to help us.”

  “Just seems so desperate. What can we do?” Nick sighed.

  “We have to learn to keep them away, to distract them or to attract them to something besides us,” Dad said.

  “Like what you did with that truck?” Steve asked, sitting up. “Maybe we can attract them to one of those, then blow them up.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but that would just blow up a few,” Dad sighed. “Something like that is still helpful, blasting the music, the engine. It will draw all the zombies there, then we go do what we need someplace else. The problem though is that we could be drawing in more from miles around. Then when we go out again, more just keep coming in, or past us, to that noise. We attract them on this side, more come from that side, and vice versa. So no matter what we do, there will still be zombies.”

  Everyone sat slumped, unsure. The new survivors were pretty new to all this, to thinking of fighting and solving something against the horde of demons they feared. But at least some were listening as they were gaining back their sanity and health.

  Nick raised his hand.

  Dad's brow furrowed. He nodded.

  Nick spoke, “And don't expect cars to start. They've been sitting out there a couple of months. Batteries and starters will be draining. Some may start, but you never know.”

  Dad nodded, giving thanks to God for his luck so far.

  “First, we do Plan 1, rescuing; then, we set up fire points, burning zombie bodies at the intersections where we need them. We burn them safely, so they don't spread. If that works, we go out and get stuff. As we're doing that, Nick, Amador, I want you to start fortifying this place, especially the lower windows and doors. Get the new folks to help you. These windows have metal wiring but we should cover up the lower half, keep ourselves out of view. And make sure to cover the views into the courtyard.”

  Nick added. “Maybe we can use the cars to support the fences, block up the front doors and windows.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Dad said.

  “I know construction, my job,” Amador said.

  “Great,” Dad nodded. “Think of The Horde. They will eventually push open the doors, or swarm up to the second floor windows, the outside ones. If they form up, they'll get through that fencing pretty quickly. We'll need to stop them at the main doors, the front ones. They might eventually break through some windows, damn even the second floor windows. Figure out how we can bottle neck them, slow them, and then hide from them somewhere. Take materials from outside rooms and reinforce a hiding place. And I think we need to blockade the stairwells, so they are single file, so we can fight them there somehow. I don't know. Something.”

  Dad took a breath and then continued, “We gotta slow them enough to then burn them if we have no other choice. Our first trip out, after rescuing those boys at Fairfax, is getting propane tanks. I know where some are. They're close. A gas station down the street sold them. They got a cage full of them there. We get those, and put them up on the roof. Flamethrow the hell out of The Horde if it comes.”

  “We're gonna need more weapons,” Steve said, “for them.”

  Dad realized he had to go out again. The blade store he went to before still had plenty. The actual weapons were getting slim, but it was still stocked with lots of blades and knives. These could be made and reinforced into better weapons like spears and polearms. There were lots of swords but their handles were shoddily made, not for fighting. He left a lot of those. He tested them out against a cinder block and they broke within a few swings, not the blades, but the handles.

  “Yeah, we'll go back to the sword store too. That will be Plan Three or Four.”

  “Sean went that way, east,” Randall sa
id.

  “I'll keep an eye out for him,” Dad said. “Steve and I.”

  “Me?” Steve's eyes widened.

  “You're going back out there with me,” Dad said.

  Steve nodded a bit, or maybe it was a negative shrug.

  “Steve, and all of you, the fighting is crazy. It's draining. It's stressful. It's that thing... post traumatic stress thing. But you gotta keep going. You... it's not like you get used to it but...”

  “You can handle it. You last longer,” Lena answered looking at Steve. “Just relax and do it. Don't let it weigh you down.”

  Steve looked worried but manned up and nodded.

  Dad looked at his daughter. She saw his look and straightened up. She was strong and young, powerful. She was so capable, able to fight. He felt pride but a sadness too. That was just it, his daughter had to fight, in this fallen horrible world. He smiled but could not hide his sadness.

  She smiled back, anxious. “But we're rescuing the boys at my high school first, right?” Lena asked.

  “Yes.”

  18. Smoldering Hope

  Dad, Nick, Randall and Steve walked out to the parking lot. They huddled near the inner gate that opened to the teacher's parking lot. There were zombies scattered on the street beyond but not focused on the school. They stood about in groups waiting for some sensory activation. They rambled to and fro, seeming to congregate with others.

  Dad walked through the gate into the parking lot. He walked slowly to a corner, grabbing and dragging a dead zombie. There were a few dead ones within the lot by the entrance, rotting away. Along the streets surrounding the school were plenty of corpses. Quite a few were drying out and flammable. Dad separated a small pile. Steve came up moving slowly like Dad to not alert zombies rambling about. They still came but were not alerted as much as drawn.

  Nick came up, scuttling through the parked cars. He wasn't as armored as them, so Dad warned him to keep low and out of view -- and to slow down. He had his face hidden by a football helm and cloth wrap. The zombies still got excited, coming closer. Nick froze.

  Then Rondo came rambling up. He started barking at the zombies at the fence. Dad gritted his teeth but Rondo seemed to confuse them. They fluttered in circles, unsure. Hmm... Dad motioned for Nick to come closer.